Doeskin
by chicaalterego
Summary: After reading the tale of the hallows Harry should have known Death was petty. Now the "Master of Death" was to be reborn in an exiting world of ninja as a Nara deer. 'Death can't harm its master' his bloody arse
1. Doeskin

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writting this for free.

**Tittle:** Doeskin

**Summary:** After reading the tale of The Hallows Harry should have known Death was petty. Now the "Master of Death" was to be reborn in an exiting world of ninja as a Nara deer. 'Death can't harm its master' his bloody arse.

**AN:** This is going to be a silly little fic with a non-epic, reincarnated MoD Harry. It hit me that Death is kind of a dick from the tale of Beetle the Bard, so that's how I'm going to play things here.

**Ps. For those who don't know: 'Mendokusei' means 'troublesome' and it's the catchphrase of Nara Shikamaru.**

_Edited 15/07/2015_

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Chapter 1: Doeskin

Harry had left the Deathstick in Dumbledore's grave, thrown The Ring into the forbidden forest and stocked his precious invisibility cloak in a trunk in the attic after the Battle of Hogwarts was over. Soon enough, he moved on with his life, finally married Ginny and she, true to her Wesley heritage, popped up kids like there was no tomorrow. His work-life was just as awesome as his private one; he became an Auror along with Ron and Neville, saved a bunch of lives and was looked up to and loved all around. All in all life was peachy. It even had a happy ending as he died of old age surrounded by an army of great grandchildren.

Of course, Harry had worked hard his whole life, defeated a couple Dark Lords, and suffered the pain of losing his wife and all his friends since he outlived them all, but he could not complain. He would eventually join them in the next big adventure and there was still so much he wanted to do before he turned to dust.

During his long life, Harry had become headmaster of Hogwarts, had been head of the Wizangemot, earned the Order of Merlin First class award, and obtained a whole bunch of fancy-smancy labels.

Hell, he was the Dumbledore of the twenty first and twenty second centuries -even if he never wore eccentrically clashing clothes and always kept his face cleanly shaven to his last breathing day.

Of course, Harry should have known that all his good luck would come to bite him in the arse at some point, never mind the crappy childhood and constant near-death experiences he got in while he worked to make the magic world a better place.

When Harry Potter, hero of the wizarding world, finally kicked the bucket, he met Death. True to his early Muggle upbringing, Harry had imagined the entity known as Death to be a white skeleton wearing a black hood and carrying a scythe but, to be honest, Harry didn't remember what Death looked like after the encounter was over.

The only things the now decease Hero remembered of the whole thing was hearing that he had become the sodding 'Master of Death' and thus couldn't die.

Harry had felt annoyed, yet curious, as Death explained he would be need to be reborn. Harry hadn't been too happy to hear that he wouldn't be joining his loved ones yet (if ever), but he tried to look to the bright side: there was still so much he had to learn about magic, so much to do: he never got to break the curse on the DADA teacher's position, nor managed to become fluent in Mermish nor learnt to write in Sanskrit. He also never got to eat his last-meal-treacle-tart, nor left the political world as uptight and orderly as he would have liked.

Harry could fix so many things and finish so many projects if he had a second chance at life. The knowledge he had amassed during his two hundred years of life could be used to take the wizarding world to a new age of prosperity! Plus he would once again be young enough to use a broom and play Quidditch...

Of course, those things would have been true, had he been reborn a wizard.

The famous three Peverell brothers once had been "rewarded" by Death with three cursed gifts. One died a horrifically-bloody dead, the other killed himself because he could not bear to continue living.

After Harry felt his not-quite-human body fall down to the ground with a wet plop, coming right out of a doe's... well... out of a doe. He was pretty damn sure the poor bloke who wished for the invisibility cloak got some kind of horrid punishment in the afterlife because of how long he had evaded Death.

"Congratulations," Harry heard a voice speaking in Japanese -a language he had more or less learnt before dying- from somewhere to his left as a rough tongue licked his the over-sensitive, furry skin of his face. "It's a beautiful doe."

Harry felt a wonky, inhuman noise out of his throat as he cursed.

Merlin's trice-dammed bollocks! Death was a monumental prat.

He would think even worse of Death still when the pineapple-haired man who spoke those words soon would comment on the thunder-shaped scar he -or rather she- was apparently born with.

"Death can't harm his master" his bloody arse.

...

It had been four months since the little green-eyed doe was born into the Nara clan, and it was Shikamaru who got the very troublesome duty of taking care of this one. The little one had been odd from the first day. It wouldn't try to drink from her mother's tits, and seemed to be more alert and aggressive than your average baby deer. And so, Shikamaru was stuck with feeding the doe with a bottle with the hopes it wouldn't die for starvation. At least she would eventually be old enough to feed from grass.

Shikamaru had named the thing 'Mendo' after her first week around, because all he could think while he looked into those challenging green eyes was 'mendokusei'. Not that 'Mendo' was even a proper name, but he couldn't be pressed to think of a better one.

Still, he got the feeling he had been given quite the flat look for his naming. Why did he get that feel? He had no clue. It wasn't like deer ever showed any emotions, but he was the indistinct impression that the doe disliked her new name.

Well, never mind that. He wasn't going to change it. Thinking of another name was just too much of a bother and he felt like going for a nap.

...

Harry was having a hard time getting used to living as a doe. She spent her mornings walking all over the grass of the Nara Clan Forest, her afternoon eating grass in the Nara Clan Forest, and the nights sleeping on the grass of the Nara Clan Forest. Harry felt like his mind was going numb because of that damn forest and because of the lack of anything interesting happening since he was reborn into a life as a passive herbivore.

Being named Mendo, Harry was sure, was a sign that the universe was mocking him-her. The-boy-turned-doe might not have grown up surrounded by too much Muggle literature on her first life, but the -undeniably male- wizard had learnt at some point in his life that Mendo (or was it Mando?) was the name of the personification of Death (some kind of Veela) in a famous Muggle book involving a bunch of rings.

Harry -for he refused to think of himself by any other name, even if he had to life with the fact he/she was now female- was rather upset to learn she was a pet.

At least, as a pet, she had managed to avoid feeding of his new 'mother' for too long. Harry had the mind of a 200 years old male wizard, and he/she was too weirded out by the notion of breast-feeding again, so she only ate what he-she needed to survive, which mean she ate the barest minimum and was malnourished.

But then the ninja bunch decided one of them should feed the pet with a bottle to help it gain weight, which solved that particular issue.

Still, Harry would never grow as tall as the other does because of the bad eating habits she developed on such early stage of his/her life, but he/she couldn't be bothered about it. What did bother him/her, though, was the fact that his/her owners were ninjas.

Merlin, being reborn as a female was messing up his uses of pronouns.

Anyway, the Nara clan in general -and her caretaker Nara Shikamaru specifically- were boring to the point it made Harry-doe miss his history of magic classes with Professor Bins -at least he was human while being bothered to death back then.

The Lazy-Bum Clan didn't fit Harry's image of how ninja were supposed to be; plus, they spent way too much time plopped on the floor, drinking tea and playing shogi for his/her taste. In fact, he-erm-she was surprised to discover that the Naras were ninjas, and not only because that meant ninjas were still around -which wasn't the case in the world he/SHE left behind, thus it meant she was in a different one altogether-, but because how unfitting they seemed to be ninjas. Heck, they were raising deer!

Harry couldn't figure out why a ninja would take care of a bunch of deer, but she did gather that those particular deer they took care off were slightly smarter than the regular ones. Harry could see in the eyes of his/her new pack the same intelligence he saw reflected on his Patronus.

Idly, she wondered if becoming a deer was the fate of all masters of death, but shook his-HER head at this.

Dumbledore's rainbow colored socks! he missed his masculinity a tad too much; even if the last time he saw it it was a floppy, wrinkly thing that was no longer operative.

At least, there was one familiar thing to Harry when he became a doe: being a reject.

The deer, it seemed, could notice there was something different about her and rejected the Master-of-Death/doe much like everyone on Privet Drive once did. Harry just shrugged that off and kept on trying to find his magic. Much to her consternation, it was there, but Harry never came to learn wand-less and wordless magic as a male wizard, so that project would take a while.

Not to mention, that her magic was feeling kind of wonky.

In fact, it felt like it wasn't his-her magic in the first place, but, then again, magic was different in every species, so she kept experimenting and trying to use the magic she might still have access to without having hands to hold a wand, nor the vocal chords to speak the incantations -all the while keeping herself carefully out of sight.

But, of course, things never went smooth forever and somebody was bound to notice Harry-doe's activities.

...

Nara Shikamaru was walking around looking for Mendo. The doe had not been seeing for a while now and it was his duty to see the troublesome animal hadn't died or something.

"Mendokusei," He breathed as he walked under the canopy of trees in the Nara Clan Forest. He was not very happy with the idea of going: he had just become a Chunin and he was going to be sent for a mission in two days. Shikamaru had planned on doing nothing until it was time to go to said mision, but his father had asked him to look for the doe that had been appointed as his responsibility from birth.

Looking for the doe was a drag, and made him wish he had a Inuzuka or a Hyūga around to help him track the troublesome doe.

His lazy attitude left him suddenly as he felt a spike of chakra ahead of him and he hastily moved forwards, using his familiarity with the forest to stay out of sight. What he saw when he finally found Mendo would make him freeze in his tracks.

Mendo, the tiny doe that still hadn't outgrown the white splotches on her brown back, was using a tree branch to make drawings on a barren piece of soil. The undeer-like behavior was even more baffling by the fact that those drawings resembled fūinjutsu arrays.

Shikamaru instantly picked a bush to hid behind as he watched, mind running a mile a minute. The doe wasn't privy to his presence, though. So the Nara had ample time to try (and fail) to come up with an explanation of what he was seeing.

Mendo suddenly looked upset as she stomped over whatever she had drawn and moved a bit to the left, dragging the stick down to the ground anew.

Shikamaru couldn't help but notice the many stomp marks all over the place.

Mendo had probably been doing this for a while.

She repeated this about fifteen times before nodding then, unexpectedly, picked up a lizard that had been too conveniently pinned at the tail with a rock to be a happenstance. Then, the doe put the lizard in the circle and pushed her hives at the edges closing her eyes, letting out a wave of the same bizarre chakra he had felt before -making it clear for Shikamaru who had been the source.

Suddenly, where the lizard used to be, a green teapot appeared. A green teapot that had legs and promptly rushed and vanished behind the bush he had been in.

Clearly unhappy, the doe followed the teapot's way with her eyes, which inevitably lead to her spotting the lazy ninja. Twin green orbs widened as they met the young Nara's suspicious black ones.

The doe didn't lose a moment to let go of the branch (or was a doe-version of open-mouthed shock?), but made no further move. Shikamaru didn't move either from where he was half-hidden by the bushes.

The doe and the ninja got stuck in a staring match, for neither of them had the faintest idea of what to do now.

After what felt like hours of stillness, the Nara let out a heavy sigh. "Mendokusei," he breathed and then properly got up from his uncomfortable kneeling position, soon getting into his signature slouched stance. The doe looked at him with curiosity, a slight tilt to her head as green eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

The only thing the recently-appointed Chūnin had been able to figure so far was that the doe was smarter than she looked. So, Shikamaru made a gesture for Mendo to follow and started to walk back to the Nara complex, oddly sure the doe would follow.

He had an idea of how to learn more about the doe's character and intelligence.

Even if it was a ridiculous idea born from a too big brain that was malfunctioning from over-thinking.

...

Nara Shikaku had heard the belief that genius often came along with madness. Of course, that belief did manifest itself true in some individuals, but such was never the case for Naras... or at least he could claim so until the day he walked into the living room and witnessed his son explaining to a doe how to play shogi.

The Head of the Clan stared a whole minute from the door, before he closed it open and turned to walk on the opposite direction, wholly ready to pretend he hadn't seen anything.

He had an inkling his son had gotten himself into something troublesome.

**To Be Continued**

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**AN:** Well, dunno about you guys, but I liked writing this one. It was fun, and I hope people found it refreshing.

To be honest, I was feeling quite proud of myself because I momentarily felt that I had written a fic with only "Mendokusei" for dialogue, but then I proof-read it and was reminded I also wrote "Congratulations" and "It's a beautiful doe".

I hope you enjoyed Doeskin and please REVIEW!


	2. Doe-eyed

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

_Edited 15/07/2015_

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Chapter 2: Doe-eyed.

Harry pranced around the Nara Clan forest, eyes sharp with intent. He (rather she) had a mission. Not a ninja mission or anything of the sort. No, this was far more important.

She needed to find flowers.

Why would 'Mendo', the doe the wizard had become, would be looking for flowers? Well, it was quite simple. She had a reason, a good reason, and that reason was Nara Yoshino.

The mother of his "owner" Shikamaru was a strict woman that had both her son and husband harshly squashed under her thumb. In the Nara complex, her word was law, and Harry-the-doe knew she would need to have her on his/her side to accomplish her ultimate goal.

Move out of the Nara-Clan Forest.

It annoyed Harry to no end that Shikamaru had thought he could seek 'Mendo' as a casual Shogi opponent, all the while leaving her to live in that boring-as-hell forest.

One would believe that after she defeated him, he would, at the very least, give her a room in the main house or something.

No. The only thing Mendo obtained with her victory was a second round by the genius brat, who was wanting to defeat her because his pride couldn't take losing to a four months doe.

Harry had to admit, though, the kid was bloody brilliant. He came up with moves that would have had Ron sweating when he was in his eighties. However, not even the brilliant mind of the young ninja could hope to beat the intellect of a doe with the knowledge of a man old enough to piss dust.

The reason Harry was kicked out of the main house was not because of her victories, but because she became terminally bored at some point within the 4th consecutive Shogi match, and tried to lose on purpose.

Nara Shikamaru was not amused, so she was pretty much shooed away back into the forest.

The only thing to make her feel slightly sated was that Nara Shikaku thought his son was a bit mental. Specially after the adult ninja brought her back to the house out of curiosity (or maybe out of hope for his son mental state) to see if the doe really knew how to play. Harry then decided to play the 'dumb doe' card, going so far as to chew on a piece of wood on the board when Shikaku looked like he expected her to play.

Inner (male) Harry smiled to himself. He felt like the singing frog of one of those cartoons Dudley used to watch as a kid. Harry had wondered back then why the frog never sang in front of anyone but his owner, making everyone around think the greedy man wanting to exploit it was crazy, and driving said man to despair until the man simply put the frog in a box and dumped it somewhere.

Now, Harry knew.

The frog was having fun.

But that's not important right now. Harry had to take advantage that the only male Nara to pay him attention was away on ninja business.

So Harry went looking for flowers.

The efforts of the doe were rewarded when she spotted a small bush peppered with some unidentified pink flowers. Harry moved nearby to take one out, but stopped when voices came out of the bush.

_***Hurtssss, hurtsss ssso much. Ssstupid birdsssess***_

_***Iss ok. The birdsssess isss gone***_

Oh, shit. Those snakes were talking. Worse still, Harry understood them.

Mendo was a Parselmouth again.

A doe Parselmouth.

That didn't make any sense! Harry had stopped speaking to serpents the moment the Horcrux was blasted out of his head with Voldemort's killing curse, yet now, as a doe, Harry could understand snake-speech?

_***Thisss isss all that damn Death'sss fault.***_ She hissed out of reflex, and the conversation in the bush stopped instantly.

A moment later, two small, harmless, green-colored garden snakes came out of the bush, looking for what they assumed was a fellow snake. Not finding one, they looked up to the doe. _***Wasss it you?***_ The bigger of the two –that was barely fifteen centimeters long—looked at Mendo with stunned awe.

_***Bloody fantasssstic,***_ the doe snarled, too immersed in her anger to keep her mouth shut and turn away.

The snakes had their slanted eyes widened.

For a tense moment nobody moved.

_***A sssspeaker!***_ The snakes chorused eventually. Harry recognized the term. Snakes called Parselmouths 'speakers' and were bound to obey them for some reason he never bother to find out.

**_*It'sss been yearsss sssince the lasssst ssspeaker… weren't ssspeakerss ssuposssed to be humanssss?_*** The smaller one (the one hurt by the bird by the looks of it) moved its head to the side to speak with the other snake.

_***Who knowssss, being ssso long… We needsss to tell the othersss.***_

For a moment, Harry's brain played a funny image of him/her with a crown, surrounded by snakes and being the queen-doe of this world's snakes.

Harry shook the image away.

_***No, waitsss!***_ Mendo hissed, but the snakes were didn't seem to be listening.

Desperate, Harry called forth his magic with no other command than have it stop the two reptiles.

It's hard to say if the result of her magic was a partial success, or a bout of accidental magic. All the reincarnated hero of Great Britain knew was that one second there were two perfectly normal snakes, and the next there was something else in their place.

The not-quite-snakes moved as fast as their new bodies could allow them, though now Mendo was quite sure the current situation was an improvement to the earlier one… maybe.

After all, the hisses that should have been easily translated to him became a slurred, nonsensical mess, akin of fabric being rubbed upon fabric.

The doe sighed in relief. Temporary danger adverted.

Still, she knew it was just a matter of time before she got found out, and then she would have a ton of shite to take care off because the universe just loved to spite "her".

More resolved than before to get on the good graces of Nara Yoshino, Mendo took the cutest flower of the bunch, and paced back towards the Nara complex, not bothering to worry on the partially-transfigured snakes she left behind on the forest.

After all, is not like they could cause any real damage now.

…

Himura Danzō was looking to the object on his desk with no small amount of apprehension. There was no doubt in his mind that the serpentine thing on top of his desk was the work of Orochimaru. The Sannin he had temporary allied himself with (until said Sannin started becoming more of a liability than a useful resource) was the only person Danzō knew was capable of managing such a feat.

To think the man could come up with something like this… this…

This sock.

This snake-sock hybrid.

Maybe he dismissed the man's usefulness a tad too soon.

All the incredible things Danzō could do with a spying tool of this caliber… Yes. Danzō could see it now, the supremacy of Konoha would be guaranteed.

After all, if whatever jutsu that transformed the living into inanimate objects without even a Hyuuga noticing the chakra was perfected, Root could learn secrets, of enemies and allies alike, swiftly.

Not to mention Danzō would be able to disguise a hundred of his men as pebbles if it stuck his fancy. The old War Hawk could then store his soldiers and even send them on missions, without alerting the enemy countries that an army was moving their way. In fact, the whole logistic of moving his troops from one location to another would be revolutionized. They would even be able to mail themselves to the home of their targets, fooling every sensor and killing whoever opposed them before they knew what hit them.

This new initiative had even more potential than the experiments with Harashima Senju's DNA!

Danzō put a hand on the arm that was both possessing the Senju's DNA and multiple Sharingan eyes. Certainly, Orochimaru had been most useful in the past, and he would continue to be so in the future.

They would probably come to some sort of agreement easily, for Danzō knew the exact thing he would offer the Sannin. After all, Danzō knew of a way to fix Orochimaru's rotting arms –damage courtesy of Hiruzen and the Shinigami the Hokage called forth after the Chūnin Exams.

An agreement, yes… better yet, an alliance. An alliance between Root and Orochimaru.

With this alliance they would be unstoppable.

Danzō would be unstoppable.

And thus, the Root that supported Konohagure's tree from the shadows would reign supreme.

Now all Danzō needed was to be sure to swiftly take care of the soon-to-be-appointed Hokage: Tsunade (who was surely getting drunk in a bar somewhere). Once he had taken the girl out of the picture, he could take Konoha to a new age of supremacy unlike anything in the history of shinobi.

Yes. First Konoha, and then the world.

The future looked promising indeed.

…

Nara Yoshino was taking the clean laundry and putting it out to dry on the sun. Her days as a housewife were both taxingly-boring and greatly unappreciated by her family. On top of that, the men in her life, both son and husband, were incredibly lazy, and more often than not were sprawled into the floor doing nothing while she worked her butt off to make sure their home was clean and there would always be tea to drink and food to eat whenever they wanted them.

Was it too much to ask an occasional offer to help? Sure, she was still a Chūnin, even as a mostly inactive one, so stamina was not a problem and she could manage three times as much as she did daily if she really had to.

"Still, a little bit of help would be nice," She mumbled.

Yoshino let an annoyed huff as she hanged yet another white sheet. The sun was shinning brightly in the sky, making sweat form in her temple and dampening her long brown hair.

Then, a breeze blew and all the sheets flapped softly, like angel wings, revealing a cute baby doe, no older than 4 months, carrying a single pink flower. The doe moved closer to her and bumped her wet, black nose in her outstretched hand. Yoshino smiled.

"You agree with me, don't you?" Yoshino asked rhetorically and the doe tilted her head. The kunoichi felt her heartstrings get pulled, instantly falling in love with the little one.

Mendo's behavior was unusual in a deer, but she couldn't dwell on that. Not when her round green eyes seemed to look at her in such an adorable way. Even the slightly starved condition of the doe (which made it's eyes budge) and the little thunder scar in her forehead were endearing.

"Do you want to keep me company, Rai-chan?" Yoshino asked and the little doe buried her little head in her arms affectionately.

Feeling considerably happier now that she would have some company, she softly patted the head of the defenseless doe. The poor thing probably felt scared in that huge forest… maybe she could keep her to herself? Her son probably wouldn't care too much anyway. He had been complaining about this one since it was delegated to his care.

A couple hours later the idea of keeping the doe cemented itself in Yoshino's mind when Mendo, recently nicknamed 'Rai-chan', picked up a duster and attempted to help her out with the cleaning.

Sure it was a total failure, but more spontaneous help she had ever gotten from anyone at home.

It was, no doubt, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

**_To Be Continued_**

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_Extra: Because socks come in pairs._

Naruto Uzumaki was many things: He was loud, loyal, a consummated prankster, and the future Hokage… what he was not, was a competent house keeper. Not that that was usually an issue, for the whiskered blond certainly didn't mind going about the discarded underwear on the floor to pick up one that didn't smell too bad when he noticed his drawers empty; but he needed to leave his home clean before he went with the Ero-Senin in this mission to find the next Hokage.

Normally leaving his place looking like a pig's pen wouldn't matter to him, but Sakura, in a rare moment of camaraderie, offered to come over to water his plants while he was gone, if he wanted. Which lead to Naruto accepting, and having to buy plants so she could water them… After all, the whole affair meant she would be coming over to his house.

Thus he needed to clean his mess for once.

Or hid the dirt.

For a moment, Naruto considered not giving a proper clean to his home, just squeezing the piles of dirt in his empty closet and secure its doors with a wooden plank. It should do the trick. He could always get the hideout re-opened when he came back and needed a less dirty underwear than the one he would, no doubt, be wearing (maybe for months) until he came back.

However, the fleeting idea of letting his dirty laundry fester and grew fungus died after he began to approach the pile of clothes he would be hiding in the before-mentioned closet, and a sock tried to bite him.

Wordlessly staring at the sock that placidly lied back into the pile, Naruto decided to take until the last piece of clothes to the cleaners.

Because, even Naruto in his ignorance knew, that when your clothes try to bit you, it means that laundry day is long overdue.

_**End of the Extra. **_

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**AN:** Rai-chan -Yoshino's nickname for Mendo-, is about the same as calling Harry "Lightening-chan". Yes, there is actually a female Japanese name meaning lightening.

I like Mendo as a name more, but I cannot imagine Harry having the same opinion, so he might purposely ignore anyone who calls him/her (the gender change confuses me every now and then) Mendo.

Also, some people will point out that I simply changed the "Omake" label to write it off as an extra. That is true. But since that one could be canon with no problem I decided to leave it behind instead of moving it to the Omake collection I shall update the same day I put on all the proof-read stuff.

**Please review?**


	3. Doers

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

**AN:** I was really happy with the response to this fic. I'm trully thankfull to you all. You are awesome.

I hope you enjoy the update! ^_^

_Edited: 24/07/2015_

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Chapter 3: Doers

Yoshino Nara, Harry decided, was a wonderful woman. She was gentle yet strict, and had a fierce temper. She reminded Harry a lot of the women the doe had loved in her life: The kunoichi had the harsh-edged tone Hermione used for chiding Harry and Ron for not studying (which Yoshino used to whip the lazy husband out of his butt), the mix of harshness and sweetness of Harry's late wife, and the motherly smother capabilities of Molly Wesley. Not to mention she had a literal killer body.

Harry looked at the Nara sprawled on the floor scratching his stomach.

Nara Shikaku was a lucky bastard.

Or maybe he would be, if he knew how to deal with dominant women –which Harry had fortunately learnt before Ginny's first pregnancy, otherwise that would have been the only kid Harry could have ever produced. However, since the man didn't know how to deal with his wife, and he was as afraid of Yoshino as any regular first year would be of McGonagall on a transfiguration class… well, let's just say the man was whipped.

As far as Harry knew, Pineapple-head Jr. was also oblivious on how to behave around dominant females too, so Harry would be forever free of lean back and enjoy the protection her new status of "favorite pet" entailed.

"Ne ne, Rai-chan. Are you hungry?" Yoshino asked kindly and the doe looked up to the vegetable soup she was being offered.

A burst of warmth enveloped harry-doe as she basked in the positive attention the woman gave her. So far, Yoshino had made her multiple deer-friendly meals a days (which were doing wonders for Harry's weight), given Harry a big pillow and nice spot on the living room to sleep… heck, the woman was even knitting a scarf with a lightning bolt on it (among other clothes) just for her in case "Rai-chan" felt chilly... which she didn't, for deer were built to handle the cold and stuff.

Still, it was a heart-warming gesture.

Yes. Harry loved Yoshino. She was growing more and more to be the mother Harry never had.

Now that the boy-turned-doe knew what she had been missing and she was not planning to let go. Fuck the dangerous and exiting adventures of the ninja world, Harry Potter, hero of Great Britain, would remain as a pampered pet as long as she could.

Harry doe could almost be grateful to Death for his fate.

Almost.

The ex-wizard had barely eaten half of his vegetable soup, when a door opened and Nara Shikamaru came into the house with a "Tadaima."

…

"Okaeri, Shikamaru. How was the mission?" Shikaku asked his son, who winced slightly with each step. The young Nara had been hurt in combat. It wasn't a very big wound, just enough to come back with a limp, so he was not surprised that his parents had not shown any worry -albeit he was a bit thrown that his mother hadn't even acknowledged his arrival.

Shikamaru came back in one piece from his mission, and his ninja relatives couldn't ask for more. Still, the lack of a motherly greeting was odd.

"Fine," Shikamaru replied to his father inquiry, however his eyes weren't on him, but in the doe that was being feed by a uncharacteristically sweet-looking Yoshino (who was still too busy 'conversing' with the doe to even pay him attention). Her attitude took Shikamaru into a loop: he had never seen his mother shown a kind expression since… ever.

It made him feel both suspicious and confused.

The doe, as well, looked different from the last time he saw it –which was barely a week ago-: it had gained weight. The ribs on both sides of her torso were less noticeable, it had gained about an inch in size and now sported a bright green ribbon in her neck that seemed to enhance Mendo's green eyes.

"What happened while I was gone?" Asked Shikamaru to his father, in a low voice; not that he needed to, Yoshino was still ignoring him.

Shikaku sighed. "I'm not completely sure… but I think your mother loves that doe more than she loves me."

Shikamaru's eyes met Shikaku's. A silent conversation seemed to go on between the two, and Shikamaru just KNEW that his father was no longer thinking him crazy for his weird behavior about the doe.

Still, Shikaku telepathically let him know he wouldn't get involved. The adult couldn't be bothered to willingly jump into his son endeavor… or maybe, Shikamaru assumed, it was just the fright Shikaku held for his wife that was keeping his hands tied.

His father sure was a spineless coward.

…

Shikamaru didn't know it as he reached his conclusion, but his father would keep an eye on him as well as on the doe.

Watching them both was, on the older Nara's mind, just more productive than actively doing something since he would see how Shikamaru fared in such an odd situation… it was also less work for Shikaku to do. So he would sit back and watch, unless he was _really_ needed, or his son was in danger. Which was unlikely. How much phisical harm could a doe –smart or not—truly cause? If it tried anything funny, his wife would find out instantly, since those two spent practically every waking hour together now, and, surely, his son would observe the doe the times his wife wasn't with it.

All in all, his work was cut for him.

Why do a troublesome job someone else, some capable, was already doing? Sure, there was a bit of him that was curious, but the laziness outweighed any drive to satisfy said curiosity.

Still, he would probably do a bit of research on his own. He needed to be aware of as much as he could going on in Konoha (him being the adviser of the past Hokage and the logical option to advise the new one) and being unaware of something going on in his own complex would be neglecting things a tad too much. Even on Nara standards.

Yep, keeping an eye from a distance, nothing more troublesome than that for Nara Shikaku to do.

…

It took while for Yoshino to even notice her son was home. When she did, she simply ordered him to go shower and fix his room –which he had left a mess before going away, it was too troublesome to clean—and then come back in an hour for dinner. And, of course, Shikamaru couldn't stay up there and rest –no matter how tired he was from the mission and the debriefing. If he did, his mother would make sure he had nothing to eat until the next day.

It didn't even seem to matter to her that he had been gone for a week.

Oddly enough, he was a bit relieved: that was the mother he knew, not the weird, kind-looking woman he barely recognized when coming home.

Shikamaru was unhappy nevertheless. He did have to go up and clean his room, and no one liked doing that.

"Mendokusei," he let out, more out of habit than anything else, before nodding to show that he would be obeying the order. He needed a moment to think of the new developments, and it wouldn't be the first time he did that while completing the very bothersome task of leaving his room neat.

Before he left the room, though, he could hear his mother revert into a cooing, sweet woman, completely infatuated with the doe; so he turned back to look how she kindly petted Mendo, who quickly buried herself into his mother stomach as though it were an overly-affectionate kitten. His mother, on the other hand, looked very happy and squeezed the doe gently.

Shikamaru didn't know exactly why he was surprised when Mendo rose its head to look at him, giving him the most irritating triumphant look he had ever gotten.

That thing had won over his mother, and was rubbing it in his face.

Clearly, that thing was smarter than he first thought it was. It had tamed the monster, and it was clearly a master in manipulation.

And he had thought Tora The Cat had been a troublesome animal.

Deeming Mendo as a threat now, Shikamaru left the room. The whole week he had been away, he had debated whether to tell his teammates or not. He almost did, several times, but he decided he better gather more data before getting them involved: It would certainly be less of a hassle to handle matters on his own for the time being than having his teammates as obnoxious tag-alongs… or so it seemed, before Shikamaru learnt the doe had gained protection of the most troublesome woman he knew.

Shikamaru wouldn't seek for help right away. He had a room to clean, food to eat… plus he would be seeing his team the next day. No need to track them down now.

The lazy ninja certainly didn't want to explain to their families why he wanted to talk with them now. That, without a doubt, would be a bothersome thing to do, specially so since they were together not an hour ago.

Besides, now that he was back, his duties handling Mendo were his again; meaning, he had tomorrow morning's feeding time (which he would no doubt need to continue because Mendo was still underweight) to confront the doe.

…

"Good morning, Shikamaru," Yoshino greeted Shikamaru, who just stared at his mother and the feeding doe. His mother had given It breakfast despite him being home to take back his duty. Shikamaru instantly knew what it meant, but he got an explanation regardless. "Son, you had been complaining a lot about taking care of Rai-chan. So I'm taking care of her from now on… Don't worry, you don't need to take care of another deer if you don't want to."

Being relieved of his duties was something Shikamaru was not happy about, even if he would have been in any other circumstance.

He also needn't an explanation on who "Rai-chan" was. It was just too obvious.

"But—" Shikamaru tried to protest, gaining an instant sharp look from the fearsome Nara Yoshino. Needless to say, the battle was lost before it even began.

"Mendokusei."

Apparently, it was time to get his teammates involved, after all.

**_To be continued._**

...

**_EXTRA: Weirdoe _**

Nara Shikaku was, for the second time in two days, standing by the door of his living room seeing things he never expected to see. The first one had been his son attempting to teach a doe how to play shogi, the second being Yoshino cooing over the exact same doe, which was carrying a piece of cloth in it's mouth and had a light layer of dust on top of it's nose. Predictably, the doe sneezed, dropping the piece of cloth, and his wife gave the little animal a look he hadn't see in Yoshino's face since Shikamaru's toddling years.

It made him stop and stare.

And keep on staring.

All the while the stern woman he married cooed over the doe they had put in charge of Shikamaru. As soon as the doe stopped sneezing, resolve closed it's eye and it bent down to pick the rag and imitating the cleaning Yoshino was doing.

Pretending he hadn't seen anything, again, he closed the door and shook his head. He was tempted to get a second look to make sure he wasn't seeing things, but restrained. If he did anything to disrupt his wife's current mood she might toss him a broom and demand his help there.

The impossibility of what he had witnessed was bugging him. There was something about that doe that was making his family act weird.

Suddenly, the Hokage adviser had a flashback to the scene of the doe being tought shogi (a memory he had been doing his best to pretend didn't happen) and tried to focus, not on the implications of his son sanity's, but on the reactions he had seen the doe have to the explanation... Now that he thought about it, it had looked like the doe had been listening while looking on the board.

An idea, one so silly he wouldn't have attempted if he hadn't seen the doe wrap Nara Yoshino around it's little finger, crossed Shikaku's mind. Latter that night, the man looked for the doe in the living room (where his wife had deemed to give Mendo a cushion for it to sleep), then dragged the doe the short distance from there to the shogi set. The doe looked at him blankly, then down to the board. With no small amount of expectation, he made the first move, all the while keeping a keen eye on the doe. The doe looked up at him once more, then down to the board and... it started chewing on a wooden piece.

He had to take the piece back before the doe accidentally swallowed and died by choking on it.

Realization on what exactly he had been attempting hit not a moment latter.

Great. He was acting weird too.

**_End of the Extra._**

* * *

**.**

* * *

**AN:** Sorry for the delay. To those I told I would be gone two week, let me tell you I was out 3, plus some days on the beach. Now I just started the semester so I had a bit of time in hands. I have an idea on what to write next, so you can be sure there is a next one.

**AN** 24/07/2015: Oh, gosh, is that new content I spy? yeah it is! I took the OMAKE out and it felt empty. I hope you liked the extra :D

Ps: Can anyone help me think of words that contain "doe" in them?** (°~°)**


	4. Doeless

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

**AN:** Hi there everyone. Thanks for sticking out with me. After looking how last chapter got less response than the first too I feared it wasn't all that good. No, to be honest I KNEW it wasn't my best chapter so far, but I was hoping nobody would notice… So, to make it up to you, I squeezed my brain to produce this one with the hopes its better.

Special thanks to: lemonxlime15, lilyoftheval5, .reads., iciclefangAJ; all of whom gave me suggestions to name future chapters.

Enjoy!

.

* * *

Chapter 4: Doe-less.

"A first summon?" Shikamaru looked at his companion aseptically. Chōji simply nodded; a potato chip finding its way into his mouth.

Instead of elaborating his previous words, Chōji continued to chomp and dig more food for a good five seconds before Ino's patience snapped.

"Give me that!" She said irritably, "Now explain what you meant."

Although the big-boned ninja wasn't happy to lose his snack, he complied with the petition of the irritable kunoichi. "Well, Shika was talking about this very smart doe, and since all the smart animals tend to be summons, maybe your Mendo-doe is a first summon? I mean, some summon had to be first, right?" He finished, then produced another bag of chips out of his clothes, and resumed eating.

Ino looked unpleased that his teammate hadn't so much as stopped chewing to explain his theory, but kept her mouth shut. It just wasn't worth the effort.

Shikamaru, on the other hand, had his brain thinking on the possibility said by his friend. Sure, it made sense in a way, but the theory had holes.

First of all, summons lived in places with unusually high concentrations of nature chakra. There was no nature chakra to be found in the Nara complex.

Second, deer had no register of ever being a summon clan (not like the dog clans that kept on having new heads for each species).

Third, there were no registers of new summon clans, ever. It was like they were always there, just like humans always roamed the land.

However, if Shikamaru didn't pay attention to those three main reasons why Chōji's idea didn't make sense, there were some things that fit the theory; such as the higher intelligence and unique abilities (such as the bizarre fūinjutsu and unexpected strategic wisdom).

Honestly, it was more likely that Mendo was an isolate case than anything, or that it was the start of, not a summon clan, but a mutation that could be passed on to help out in fighting; such as was the case for the Aburame.

Shikamaru sighed. One way or another, now that Chōji had brought the issue to the table, it was to be considered as a possibility and, despite the (un)likeliness of it, it would be an option that should be verified… besides, Shikamaru had no way to test his own theories. They even might find something by pursuing the possibility of Mendo being a first summon.

Now they just needed an expert in the area. Someone who has both knowledge and contact with a summon clan…

The answer came to him almost instantly: he needed an Inuzuka.

Sure, the doggy clan were not the only ones that had could be of help within Konoha, but he feared what might happen if he went to Anko for help. The crazy, kunoichi would be too troublesome to even consider… and other ninja's, such as Hatake Kakashi, would likely inform some higher-up about the issue.

Now, in a matter of which Inuzuka to look for help, it was also an obvious choice. He would go to their old classmate, Kiba, who, despite his goofy and loud front, was actually as loyal as a dog to his friends (Shikamaru and Chōji included, for the many times they slacked off together during the academy), and was a good bet to keep the secret of the troublesome doe.

Acknowledging the fact that the number of people involved in the situation was growing fast, Shikamaru couldn't help but sight. Now there would be 4 ninjas (five if you counted Akamaru) who would tag along in the supremely stupid-looking mission of shadowing a doe.

On the bright side, the situation wasn't bigger than that. After all, it's not like a doe that has spent playing the role of a pampered pet could awaken the interest of too many people. The way Mendo behaved, hinted that she wanted to stay away from trouble, and the doe looked smart enough not to actively seek the attention of the ninja in the village. Shikamaru himself wouldn't have discovered she wasn't your average doe if it wasn't because a stroke of luck.

Of course, that didn't mean they would not need to thread carefully and fast: secrets never remained buried in a ninja village. Besides, if Mendo did happen to be a first summon, it would be troublesome, since many could find interest in the prospect of shaping and binding a new summons clan (if it was one, that is; which Shikamaru greatly doubted).

A mental image of a cute, ribbon-wearing Mendo doing clumsy attempts of cleaning the house popped into his head. He really hoped she really wasn't a first summon: the oldest of those clans were always respected and revered by their kin, and their actions of first summons probably had shaped the fate of the ones that came after…

It certainly would be all sorts of wrong if a Deer Summon Clan was established, only to become ones with the sole use and purpose of cleaning the house (which he assumed Mendo was bound to get better at once she had outgrown the clumsiness of youth).

"Mendokusei," he sighed, exasperated. To think the doe would show so much talent for strategy and a new brand of fūinjutsu, just to be utterly spoiled and corrupted by his mother. Or, if Shikamaru was to be honest, it was as if the doe had decided to waste it's obvious talent and smarts just to get a easy life -which would be a choice he would be hard pressed to disagree with.

Once again, Shikamaru decided to try to look at the previously mentioned bright side: at least things were sufficiently contained that he should be able to fix things before they became even more troublesome.

…

Jiraiya of the Sannin was a great man. He was not only loved by the ladies wherever he went, but he was also an incredible super-spy/ninja. It spoke volumes of his awesomeness that he was able to hear wind of a conspiracy brewing in Konoha when a)He had been way from the place, and b)Said conspiracy was barely forming.

And it was because he was just that awesome of a spy, and not because he was sitting on a tree, perving on the women in the spring bath with a nosebleed, that he happened to overhear a naked girl, who heard from a guy in a bar, that someone with a leaf head-protector was looking for 'that creepy snake ninja in the bingo book'.

Of course, it was just a matter of 'finding out more about his teammate' that Jiraiya jumped into the offspring, in the middle of a bunch of naked, big-breasted goodness.

The uber-awesome Toad Sannin certainly didn't deserve the trashing that he got.

But, back to the important part, Jiraiya learnt that Orochimaru was being seeked. By whom? That was something he didn't know, but it could never mean anything good.

To be honest, he had wanted to go and investigate right away, but he didn't. He had Naruto to think off, and his mission to find Tsunade was still ongoing. Maybe he should send a toad with a scroll?... No. If this truly was Orochimaru he needed to make haste back home. After all, it could take months to even find his big-breasted ex-teammate.

"Hey, Naruto, pack up, we are moving," Jiraiya commanded Naruto with all the authority of a man whose face had been disfigured by receiving a tad too many bitch-slaps.

"What? Did you get us kicked out of the hotel, you perverted Ero-Sennin?"

"How dare you?! I'm not a pervert… I'm a SUPER PERVERT!" He declared proudly, finishing with a Kabuki pose. Naruto's eyes and mouth became practically lines at that reply.

"Now pack," Jiraiya threw Naruto a bag (not Naruto's but Jiraiya's) so the blond would pack the Sannin's stuff while he ogled… erm, _conversed_ with the lovely, busty receptionist. He might happen to get some good "Intel" if he caused a good impression and left a good tip. Now, if the lady wanted to give something else out of gratitude… who was he to deny himself to the world? (and by 'world' he meant ladies with squeezable breasts and nice butts).

Jiraiya slammed the door on Naruto's face as he began to complain. The lecherous look on Jirayia was nothing more than a trick to lure potential lurking enemies to lower their guards… such as was the beaten face he now sported (which he would henge to be his handsome-self again by the time he had to play his role of "ladies' man").

It would be a matter of good Karma (earned by being awesome), and not sheer dumb luck, that would cause the oil Sannin to bump into a drunken Tsunade once he stepped outside the Inn, barely a week after they left Konoha, with Naruto following him with their luggage.

It was also a testament of how good things happen to good people, that the two blonds happen to get into a shouting match, that ended up with a gamble (in a game of cards Naruto had never even heard of before) and Naruto came out victorious, making the comeback of Tsunade to Konoha ridiculously easy. Not that she agreed to become Hokage just yet (the bet being about her paying her respects to the tomb of "Naruto's jiji") but there would be many chances for Jiraiya of the Sannin to convince his old crush about taking the position.

And there was no doubt she would end up saying yes… Jiraiya was way too charismatic not to be convincing.

…

Meanwhile, in a creepy evil lair…

A creepy, snake-faced ninja was sporting a very creepy smile in his creepily pale face. Creepy, yellow eyes were fixed on a piece of parchment over the table (since his arms were dead and floppy) all the while he laughed a laugh that was the epitome of creepiness.

The creep in question was, obviously, Orochimaru.

The Snake Sannin had been looking for Tsunade in the hopes she would fix his arms, but had not had luck finding his hag of an ex-teammate. Really, Tsunade could greatly benefit of his research to get rid of the grey, saggy body that she hid underneath the illusion that made her look like she was in her twenties.

Of course, Tsunade was a fool who would not see the brilliance in Orochimaru's work, and would not become his ally for the sake of vanity (which was quite ironic with how she fooled the world by making everyone think she was still a beauty).

Still, Orochimaru had more to offer than the ninja version of plastic surgery. He had found a way to bring back the death to the world of the living, and Tsunade would certainly have fallen to the temptation of getting her loved ones back… if he had looked for her to make the offer.

Pity he no longer needed her for that. Not after knowing that Danzō had found a solution to his little problem.

Ah, yes. The offer of getting his arms back was a very sweet one indeed. Not to mention, he was also getting the bonus of getting a chance to get back to that damnable bastard (Danzō) who betrayed him and caused Orochimaru of the Sannin to become a Missing-nin.

However, even if things were looking up very fast, there was something that bugged him.

Orochimaru looked at the delivered parchment. Maybe he should have tortured some answers out of the expressionless messenger before he brutally murdered him. It certainly would help to have someone to decode the hidden message in the words directed to him… not that Orochimaru was in the least surprised the words were coded, nor that he was completely unable to decode the real meaning of most of the lines (he usually could decipher all the things Danzō sent to him without a problem). And yet, he had no idea what "I have your socks" or "can you teach me how you knitted them?" was supposed to mean.

What he gathered, though, was that Danzō was convinced he, Orochimaru, had made some advance in …what? Clothing? Some sort of feet armor? Whatever it was sure was something the old warmonger had interest on. Meaning, it was quite unlikely this was a trap to lure him.

The Sannin still wanted to know what it was the man had thought he had achieved that would be worthy of such favor, but he could wait for the right moment to figure it out; which just happened to be after he got fixed, and before he destroyed his village out of petty revenge. He would also probably celebrate the unavoidable victory by experimenting on his kidnapped, innocent children and puppies for random, dastardly evil experiments.

Orochimaru smirked creepily. Things were certainly looking up for him.

…

Two genin and a chūnin stood in front of the big gate of the Inuzuka complex. The only ninja of the group, Shikamaru, walked straight up to said door and rose his fisted hand, ready to knock. He hesitated for a moment though. After all, he knew that the moment he knocked said door things were bound to become a lot more troublesome.

**_To be continued._**

* * *

**_Extra: First Morning_**

Harry-doe stretched lazily on her cushion. It had been a day since his shogi game against Nara Shikaku, a day since his friendship with pet-owner relationship with Yoshino was born, and two days since the lazy kid, Shikamaru, had gone away to some ninja mission. To be perfectly honest, Harry was surprised it was so easy to get a spot to rest inside the house, instead of the forest. All it took was a heart-broken look from the 4 month's old doe, and Yoshino didn't have the heart to kick her out to spend the night in the contained wilderness of the Nara forest.

His acting cute to manipulate the woman was, undoubtely, an act the Marauders would have wholeheartedly approved of. In fact, it had come so easily to him, that Harry was sure, had he pushed it, he might even have end up sleeping within the Kunoichi's room.

He knew better than to try to get himself a permanent spot inside the room of a married couple, though, so he happily accepted the cushion on the living room's floor.

Now, waking up for the first time inside of a house instead of a forest, Harry came to a horrifying realization: he needed to pee. He needed to pee and he didn't have opposing thumbs with which he could open the wooden door. Worse still, the house he was now stuck in was a ninja house; who is to say the whole structure wasn't booby trapped and he would end up getting one of those pointy-star-thingies up his arse?

This was bad.

With as much speed as a small-blathered doe with a full tank could manage, he half-jumped, half rushed to the door of Nara Yoshino. The greatest Minister of Magic ever seen in since the time of the founders was praying to whatever deity was willing to listen for his blather control to last long enough to evade making a mess.

The curse he let out in his agony came out of his doe-mouth as the painful whine of a dying animal, and, not a second latter, Yoshino appeared in front of him in a swirl of leaves. Why the leaves were there? He didn't care. In fact, he wouldn't be able to care if Grodic Griffindor came to gift him his sword and name him his official heir. All Harry could focus on right now was the vast, earthy toilet beyond the wooden walls.

With the most pitiful look ever to grace Harry's face in any life, he moved his head to gesture to the door. Yoshino's expression of realization was instantaneous, and the door was promptly opened and Harry-doe was carried outside.

It was a miracle he didn't pee on the woman, really.

After a ten tortuous seconds in which Harry relieved himself under the watchful eye of a woman he was starting to form a crush on, he felt himself blissfully empty.

"Oh, Rai-chan, I'm so sorry. I didn't think..." Yoshino trailed off, and Harry had to burry his head in the Kunoichi's stomach, if only to distract her from finish that phrase. He might just die from embarrassment if she did.

A yawn from inside the house, along with a question about the breakfast was the end of that scene. Harry would have been offended of the cheek of Nara Shikaku of asking his wife food while still half-sleep, if he wasn't so grateful the lazy-bum had distracted the now irritated Yoshino from fussing over the doe that almost peed inside the house.

For a whole day, Harry was too mortified about what happened to even worry about the fate of his sleeping spot on the floor.

Then night came.

"Oh, Rai-chan," Yoshino began as Harry looked stricken towards the fluffy pillow. Clearly worried of getting it stolen away from him. "I will come very early tomorrow so you can do your thing outside."

Upon that promise, Harry felt a wave of warmth spread through his whole body.

It was official. He loved that woman.

**_End of the Extra._**

* * *

.

* * *

**AN:** I hope you enjoyed the chapter. It was odd that I managed the real chapter without adding Mendo at all (the Extra doesn't count), which is why this chapter was named "Doeless" (which is not a real word, but who cares).

AN 24/07/2015: I hope you enjoyed the new content on this one. The "Reverse Animagus" parts 1 and 2, will be latter put on somewhere else latter. Promise.

Anyway, **REVIEW!** Let me feel the love, baby :P


	5. Hairdoe

**Disclaimer**: Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

**AN:** I just wanted to say how sorry I am for the delay. Hopefully this chapter will be worth the wait. It took several tries for me to be satisfied. Truth is, it went in an unexpected direction and many things I had planned were dumped because they no longer fit.

Also, an apology to the reader, I promised a specific OMAKE in the end. The feeling just wasn't right with the change of direction this took.

Have fun!

.

**_Originally betaed by: 123paco_**

**_Edited: 27/07-2015_**

* * *

Chapter 5: Hairdoe

Not ten minutes after Shikamaru had decided to search for Kiba, the genin Ino-Shika-Cho team was seated with said ex-classmate on the traditional, beige-colored tatami mats in one of the Inuzuka's compound living rooms. The reunion seemed to have taken a surprisingly ceremonious feel as some steaming tea had been delivered by none other than Kiba's mom, Tsume Inuzuka, before they were left alone there. As soon as they were alone though, Kiba got out of the formal kneeled-down position and adopted a more comfortable cross-legged one.

"Finally! Alone at least!" Kiba practically shouted to the ceiling in relief. His fellow genin looked at him in confusion.

"What was all that about?" Choji asked, seemingly the first to get over the bizarre welcome they had received by the normally wild and friendly clan. The tea and cookies might have had something to do with the fast recovery of the Akimichi.

"Hell if I know!" He threw his arms to the air dramatically, "One day mom is her normal violent self, the next she comes back all furious, declaring I should be learning some formal crap and stuff... I think she said something about discrepancy... or was it diplomacy? Whatever, she is driving me crazy! She even tried to teach me table manners! Can you believe it? Table manners! To make matters worse, Team Kurenai is out of commission until Hinata gets out from the hospital - damn Neji - and we are trapped here in Konoha until god knows when!" Kiba somehow managed to tell all of that without pausing for breath. It was actually quite impressive as far as ranting went.

Once Kiba blew enough steam by complaining and bitching about his horrible fate, his attitude gave a one-eighty as a shimmer of something akin to hope shone in his eyes.  
"Please tell me you are here to take me away," he begged. "I don't know how much more I can stand it! Next thing I know she might try to teach me how to fold napkins, or worse... teach me how to dance!" Kiba made a pause as he managed to horrify himself with the mere idea. Ever since he lost the Chūnin exams his mom had been bat-shit crazy over the prospect of the new Hokage sending Kiba on diplomatic missions, and him becoming the reason of an inter-village conflict that might or might not be the start of the next great shinobi war...

Yeah, right, like any Hokage in their right mind would ever send an Inuzuka for anything remotely diplomatic.

Truth was, Tsume had bet good money that Kiba would pass the Chunin exams, and despite the bet having been born in a hot-headed argument with a fellow Kunoichi, Tsume decided to take out her anger on Kiba by teaching him how to behave in situations she knew his son had a snowball's chance in hell of getting into.

Not to mention the face his son had made when she decided to make Akamaru look "formal". It had been totally priceless for Tsume, though Kiba would be decidedly less amused when her mother showed him the picture later.

"Right," Ino spoke, trying to break the rather odd atmosphere that lingered in the room after Kiba's tirade. "Look, Kiba, we are here because we need your help."

"Help?" Kiba perked up intrigued. "And this help... does it involve some backup for a mission? Please tell me that whoever is in charge until the next Hokage comes around wants me to do a long, long mission somewhere very far away from my mother" He begged with wide puppy eyes.

"Er... no" Ino replied. Kiba deflated.

"This is so unfair..." He whined.

The atmosphere in the room became dense once more and Shikamaru sighed, "Mendokusei."

It was one thing to recruit their former classmate while he was conveniently unscheduled to take missions, but it was another to try to pry the son of Inuzuka Tsume from under her overdeveloped nose when she was purposefully making him suffer with useless training - something Shikamaru figured out the kunoichi was doing, even if he wasn't privy of the reason. After all, everyone knew it was the stuck-up Hyuga that were in charge of any missions in which formalities were needed.

Sadly, Kiba's help was beginning to seem very unlikely in the immediate future.

"What did you want help with, anyway?" Kiba asked with a dejected tone. Shikamaru considered not telling him right there and then, but being impeded to come with them to help verify his theory in person shouldn't make Kiba completely useless since the Inuzuka might be able to find something in his clan's library, which was only ever open to clan members, and he could rely the clues he might find with a note attached to his dog Akamaru, if not in person.

Absently trying to ignore the nagging voice that pointed out how odd it was to see Kiba without Akamaru (lest Kiba went on another rambling tirade to explain said absence), Shikamaru finally decided to let the Inuzuka know about a certain troublesome doe.

...

Akamaru was not a narcissist dog. In fact, he rarely ever cared about how he looked; so it was common to see the puppy drenched in sweat or covered with mud, sometimes even blood and rests of food. Akamaru didn't like to bathe either. Usually the closest he came to getting clean with soapy water was the occasional trip to the bath house with his owner, and he kept himself dry unless it was for the sake of relaxing in the hot water on those rare days he got truly roughed up with ninja training.

The occasions in which Akamaru's fine white hair was brushed were even more rare than his occasional water soak. In fact, those were practically non-existing since his breed neither lost fur nor had it grow to long... so imagine Akamaru's surprise when his companion's mom came to him with an arm full of smelly the bottles humans outside the clan used on their heads and bodies.

At first Akamaru was just innocently looking at the brush, not knowing what it was, but then he went through the torture of hair pulling, getting drenched for no apparent reason, then suffer under an odd device that made a lot of noise and spat hot air.

The above-mentioned torment, however, was nothing compared to the reveal of the final product. His head's fur had been fashioned into a white mini-afro, his legs had been fluffed, and his tail had been reshaped into a thin road most of his length, but the tip was done up in an unnaturally-perfect puffy sphere.

All in all, Akamaru now resembled a dreaded nin-poodle.

Akamaru would never forget the horror in Kiba's face, only surpassed in intensity by his own dismayed shame.

Disgraced, Akamaru went to hide himself from the world until the hair spray let go of its hold on his virility.

...

In another part of Konoha, another very smart animal stripped of his virility chased after the skirt of Nara Yoshino, all the while sporting the bright green ribbon that matched her eyes. The Wizard-reborn-as-a-doe was happily looking around the ninja village with a feeling of accomplishment, the doe's good mood being a direct product of having Yoshino become her new primary owner.

Not to mention having the kunoichi order her son to back off since Mendo now belonged to her (though she hadn't exactly worded it like that) gave Harry-doe a taste of victory she hadn't gotten since being reborn.

To make the morning even sweeter, Nara Yoshino was takin Harry away fron the Nara complex for the first time... even if it was because she wanted to take "Rai-chan" shopping with her. Harry liked shopping at all, though. In fact, he shuddered at the mere thought of it because of his past life just hearing the word.

Ginny Potter Nee Weasley was a crazy shopper, which had been surprising to Harry at first, but he had latter figured it made sense: Ginny had grown up without a penny to her name, getting her brother's hand-me-downs, and never getting anything that wasn't 100% essential, so having her own salary (and a rich husband) allowed her to get whatever she wanted without remorse. With her as a role-model, their daughter, the sweet Lily Luna, had also grown up into a shopaholic, and Harry had often been forced to carry all their bags and fearfully watched mountains of Gringotts gold being tossed to the wind by the females in his life.

Harry hadn't been sure if he should be thankful that his wallet was as deep as the red sea, or truly regretful that what he had inherited allowed those two to shop from dawn to dusk whenever they pleased.

Apparently, the Potter's had been one of the few pure-blood families that had increased their wealth more and more with every generation.

The horrors of shopping would chase the males in his family for generations to come.

Surprisingly, it turned out that shopping with Yoshino was actually a pleasant thing to do. All they did was walk around the Konoha market and shop for groceries and other necessary items while Yoshino cooed over his doe-self every now and then, while she asked what 'Rai-chan' thought of what they were purchasing. They rarely spent a coin, and the woman fortunately wasn't the type to window-shop.

Harry also considered it a good thing to expand his horizons. After having the option to travel around the world in a blink of an eye because of his vast magic, being cooped into the Nara forest was starting to give him a claustrophobic feeling... and a borderline passionate hatred for the color green.

Begrudgingly, Harry would come to admit to himself, after seeing shinobi doing what could pass as magic, that the concept of being reborn in a ninja village was brilliant.

Or at least it would have been brilliant if Harry weren't a doe.

He couldn't help but wonder what things would be like if he had been born as Yoshino's son instead of her pet. He would probably have been able to use his magic to do anything short of conquering the world, and maybe even that if he learnt the local techniques on top of his own experience and knowledge.

It was so not fair that he got the "doe-rebirth card" for getting the Hallows when Voldemort was the one who chased after immortality and split his soul to avoid Death; that nose-less bastard was the one who deserved getting punished by the entity!

A moment latte, Harry couldn't help but snort as he imagined Voldemort becoming a doe.

Harry-doe had been so immersed in trying to picture doe-Voldemort that he failed to notice the moment in which three genin began to shadow Yoshino and him/her.

Nara Yoshino had been in the middle of buying sweet potatoes for today's supper when she felt the weight of eyes on her back. Discretely, she turned to look towards where her acute ninja senses were pointing, only to see her son making the hand-gesture that signified she should pretend she hadn't noticed. Yoshino had no idea what his son was thinking when he decided to shadow her -certainly he couldn't have hoped for her not to notice him since she had years of experience on him- so the only logical conclusion was that Shikamaru, her baby boy, was trying to spy on the doe next to her.

Again, Yoshino had no idea what his son was thinking.

The most worrying part was that his son was rarely motivated to do anything remotely... well, anything, to be honest, so the fact that he took it upon himself to do something as "troublesome" as shadow a doe, being as lazy he was, made her very unsettled.

A memory of her husband making a comment about his son trying to teach Rai-chan to play shogi popped to the front of Yoshino's head. 'Could it be...?' A pair of innocent green eyes looked up to her as she stopped to look down, and she dismissed the idea. It was actually a very silly picture, her Rai-chan playing Shogi.

And yet, for some reason, the idea of the little doe playing the game wouldn't leave her mind. Then again, that might be because she hoped it was true. Otherwise, she would have to admit to herself that her son had become mad, and Yoshino, as her mother, owed her son the benefit of the doubt at the very least, so she wouldn't immediately dismiss her son as crazy, no, not at all.

She only hoped thinking it enough would make it come true.

...

Ino, Shikamaru and Choji were watching Nara Yoshino have a long, boring conversation with some civilian in a vegetable stand. The civilian woman was looking relaxed as the two of them exchanged pleasantries and complaints about their lazy husbands. Sure, none of them were actually interested in the conversation in the slightest, but there was only so much time you could spend watching a doe do nothing before everything around it starts pulling your attention.

Even if that something just happened to be two women cooing over said dumb, green-eyed animal.

Honestly, when Ino had heard about the mysterious Mendo, she had been so excited to follow it around. The idea of being able to observe a potential first generation summon, one that had been able to defeat Shikamaru in a game of strategy, sounded extremely promising. In her head, she would follow it around for a bit, focusing all her attention on the mysterious Nara doe, then start discovering little actions that she, and only she, would be able to pick up because she was a Yamanaka, and all Yamanaka knew more about reading behavior than any other ninja clan in existence.

The only interesting thing the doe had done so far had been tilting her head every time Shikamaru's mom spoke, which was actually pretty adorable, but not a sign of superior intelligence by any stretch of the imagination.

So far, observing the doe had been dull to the point of tears. Ino wanted to pull her hair out in frustration after two hours of the boring, self-appointed mission. Not that she would actually pull her hair out for that. It was bad enough that she had the stupid impulse of cutting it with her own hand, using a sharp kunai, while said hair had been in a ponytail.

To say she had gotten a horrid hairdo would be an understatement.

It was making her grumpy that this mission that she had been so eager about turned out to be a total joke. What was Shikamaru thinking by asking them to follow the doe? It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Mendo was nothing special. And the only thing that she might consider remarkable was that the doe followed Nara Yoshino around like a lost puppy, and that behavior was easily explained as an imprint. There was a book in the Yamanaka library about how some animals mistake the first person they see when they are born as their mother and stick to said person.

That was probably what had been truly going on.

Not that she knew whether or not Yoshino was the first person the doe saw, but that theory had a lot of merit. The again, Ino knew nothing about deer in general, this doe in particular.

Maybe Shikamaru had picked up some behaviour that was unlike other deer and became obsessed with the idea that there might be something more? Maybe the anomaly mixed with the pressure to succeed (that must have originated from being the only genin to get a promotion during the exams) were making her teammate feel the need to make some big contribution, and what would be a bigger contribution than discovering a new summon clan? A summon clan that had its origin in Konoha would be convenient, especially if the study explained the origin of such clans.

She could imagine the ninja in charge of the research trying to copy the conditions that made Mendo special. Konoha would be able to mass-produce nin-animals with chakra power and heightened intelligence. Ino could see the way the research could prove invaluable. The information that could be adquired if they could replicate superior intelligence in nin-birds, or the spying tool it could bring if, for example, mice -or another kind of vermin that never looked out of place-were trained to spy.

It would give Konoha a whole new edge over the other villages.

So the Yamanaka genin concluded that stress and wishful thinking were making Shika imagine things.

Ino's analysis of Shikamaru's possible reasons for acting weird (or maybe even going mad) came to a stop as Mendo froze in place in front of a jewelry shop and stared at a... broom? That couldn't be right. Why would a doe be staring at a broom?

Ino, Choji and Shikamaru exchanged glances and gave each other a nod, then turned back to look at the doe. The way its eyes widened slightly, perking up in alert, while it approached a broom that had been seemingly forgotten on the outside wall, was not normal. If the parallels Ino was drawing between the doe's behaviour and what she knew of human gestures were accurate, then this doe was displaying both sadness and nostalgia towards the cleaning instrument.

'Maybe it had something to do with what Shika said about the doe helping his mom with the chores?' Ino wasn't sure why, but she got the distinct feeling the doe didn't want to use the broom to sweep the floor. Which was a silly thing to think, because that was the only thing brooms could do.

In a move that made Ino realize that Shika's doe was abnormal and that Shikamaru might be onto something after all, Mendo bumped the broom with it's nose and put two of it's hooves on top of the wood stick, then steadied the four of them on top of the broom before losing its balance and stepping down from it. Mendo's eyes narrowed in what seemed like an intelligent expression of contemplation.

"Rai-chan?" Yoshino called and Mendo was now sporting a doe-eyed dumb expression, head tilting to the side as Yoshino looked at it with confusion.

The change in behavior made it obvious the doe was acting. Why? Ino didn't know, but it made the ninja in her stiffen and rise her ward.

The confusion look in Yoshino's face didn't last long, the woman seemed to dismiss the whole thing as ridiculous thought, and Yoshino walked to the doe and petted her in the head.

Had the doe gained the trust of the older kunoichi to the point of having its abnormal behavior shrugged off?

"Let's go home... Shikamaru, when you are done hiding in the alley come home, I don't want you to be late for dinner," she ordered.

'Great. When we were finally onto something Shikamaru's mom busted us to the doe.' Ino was well aware how weird that thought sounded in her head.

The Ino-Shika-Cho team stepped out of the alley one by one, and it gave Ino the feeling that the doe was mocking them with its innocent face... that is, until Ino herself came out of the alley. As soon as Mendo's eyes landed on her, the doe tensed, eyes growing wide and pupils widening as it jumped into a protective stance in front of Yoshino letting out a long, deep hiss that wouldn't be out of place coming out of the throat of a giant serpent. It sent all ninja in hearing distance jump and move to the top of the nearest building to search for one of Orochimaru's abnormally huge snakes.

Contrary to those most ninja around, Yoshino and her son's team had instantly figured out the true source of the hiss, and stayed put, slightly bewildered, but atentive to any hostile movement. Then, as doe-eyed green eyes bored into Ino's blue ones, a word, a thought that was not Ino's own echoed in her head.

'Malfoy'

Then, faster than she could say 'Who the hell is Malfoy?', the doe ran backwards, eyes never leaving Ino, until it bumped into Yoshino with it's rear. The second the doe was touching Shikamaru's mom with its butt, a loud 'crack' filled the air, and the spot in which Nara Yoshino had been standing along with the doe was empty.

Mendo and the Nara kunoichi had vanished without a trace.

Shikamaru's screaming for his mother was something that would feed Ino's nightmares for weeks to come.

...

The moment Nara Yoshino was Apparated into her own kitchen she stumbled to the floor, nausea coaxing her stomach to throw up. Startled and anxious, the kunoichi looked around for the doe that she now suspected to be a threat.. only to spot a trembling doe surrounded by an odd golden-colored chakra. The posture and attitude of the animal wasn't threatening towards her at all, in fact, Rai-chan stood with it back towards her, looking for threats, seemingly terrified.

"Rai-chan?" Yoshino asked, still nauseous, and now utterly confused. The shock of having a doe forcefully shunshin her had yet to wear out when Rai-chan moved it's head to look at her. A familiar warmth was soon pressing against her stomach, golden chakra enveloping her, clinging to her, as if she were a rock in the middle of a storm.

Feeling the emotions of the wild, untamed cloud of foreign chakra overwhelm her. She let muscular memory take over and simply hugged the trembling little doe closer to her chest.

Even if she was hugging the doe, a part of her was wary. Rai-chan, the innocent-looking doe, had managed to "abduct" a trained shinobi in such a swift manner, and so abruptly, she wasn't even able to escape what hat to be the most horrid instant-movement technique she has ever experienced.

Still, Yoshino wasn't blind to the fact that Rai-chan had reacted to a perceived threat (Her son't team, apparently) then took her back to the place it knew best, which most likely was the place the doe felt the safest.

It took several long minutes for the doe in her arms to call back it's golden chakra; simply staying there with it's head pressed into her stomach. The time it took Rai-chan to calm down was also about the same it took Yoshino to process everything that had happened in the last two minutes.

Now that Yoshino kew Rai-chan was no ordinary doe, Shikamaru's behavior was making a lot more sense.

"You do know how to play shogi, don't you?" Yoshino asked the doe, mouth blurting the first thing that popped into her head as her eyes met those round, green orbs.

A reincarnated Harry-doe had the decency to look sheepish.

_To Be Continued._

**_EXTRA: Instincts_**

Being reborn as a female was something Harry would have worried about a lot, if he had been reborn as a female in the human species. However, "her" new female self was that of a doe. Because of that, the lack of certain something between his legs was not as big of an issue. Sure, it bothered him to lose his Little Harry, but there were a lot of things he missed more than the lack of dangling genitalia.

Harry missed being able to talk, to wave a wand and have his magic obey. Harry missed the culture he had been born with, he missed seeing the sight of Hogwarts at dawn, and so many more things. Still, if he had to chose the thing he missed the more, he would say he missed his Gryffindor courage.

Yes, that's right. Harry was not as brave as he used to be, for one reason, and one reason only: instincts.

Apparently, two hundred years being valiant couldn't brush off thousands of years of the cowardly instincts born into deer and does. As that was the case, Harry spent the first months of his second life by jumping every time a twitch snapped. And, him/her living in a forest, that was to say he was very... jumpy.

It was annoying.

If Harry reacted with fright to even thunder, how would he react when a real threat came about? He had freaked out horribly when his acute doe senses picked up any new thing. His first days as a doe had been a nightmare, and he knew his past self would have disapproved of the way he would stick to his doe mother. Orphan or not, Harry was not happy with the parents he had. They, for once, were nothing more than animals, and thus, Harry knew he would be unable to build a deep relationship with them.

Is not like they would care for Harry as an individual. Not even for a long time. After all, Harry knew animals only took care of their babies till they could fend for themselves. When "the bird left the nest" the parents started anew. They had another batch of babies to be forgotten, and every single one of those also had babies to forget about, in a rinse and repeat that some muggle labeled "The cycle of life".

Backtracking a little, Harry hated being a coward. He hated it even more than the irrational playfulness that cooed him to stick his shiny new nose in random holes, or chase around butterflies in flower fields. The whole cowardly thing was even more bothersome because he had faced things that would make your average wizard faint.

Harry inner Gryffindor battled his deer-inborn instincts with enough conviction to squash an Imperio from Voldemort in the flesh.

He still failed to overcome them from time to time.

So Harry decided to do what he always did: he would fight.

But, to think that, after so many hardships and victories, Harry's most difficult fight would be a fight with "herself".

_** End of the Extra.**_

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**AN:** Thanks to my new beta _**123paco** _who helped me fix some typoes around before I re-edited the chapter.

Back to the fic: 'YAY WE HAVE PLOT DEVELOPMENT!'. I'm so proud of me *sobs*. On the downside, Shika is not seen as crazy anymore. I liked that.

**AN 27/07/2015:** For the sake of those that thought Harry over-reacted too much when he spotted "A Malfoy", I decided to trade the OMAKE there for an extra that could help you understand from where I was coming there. After all, you are not in my head. I did think it made sense, but you probably didn't see why -hence the extra.

I now only have one more chapter to go over and change, then I can truly focus in moving forwards.

I will tell you more about my secret plans then. Until then, be sure to review if you haven't. I would very much like to read and see what you thought of the tiny changes so far (specially the new extras).


	6. Evildoers

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

**ANOUNCEMENT: 29/07/2015**

I ended up yielding to the demand of getting the OMAKES out of here. I have put on only one (new) OMAKE so far because I didn't want to focus on fixing the mistakes in those until I got back on track on the main fic. Also, you might be happy to know that **I ADDED NEW CONTENT ON PREVIOUS CHAPTERS** to replace previous OMAKE'S. I also fixed the mistakes I saw on the past chapters... which is not to say they are perfect now, but I did notice some sentences that were rather hard to read, so there is improvement.

**PS: THE START OF THIS TAKES PLACE BEFORE THE ENDING OF THE LAST CHAPTER.**

PPS. Remember this stopped being cannon. Tsunade is not cured of her Hemophilia because her confrontation with Orochimaru didn't happen, because the Sannin went to look for Danzo to get his arms fixed.

**Chapter still dedicated to_ Eating Upside Down._**

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Chapter 6: Evildoers

In a world where light prevails, a lot of shady things happen in the shadows, beneath people notice, and as far away from the public eye as possible. So, having ROOT -the most influential, secret organization in all Konohagakure- have its base underground was something that was very fitting.

It also worked to make bad puns.

Not that ROOT was a joking matter: having the eye-patched war hawk as a leader made it a lot of things, but fun was not one of those. Danzo had a talent to suck the happiness (and all other emotions) away from people, and he did it so often, and with so much inner glee, that it could almost be considered a hobby. Which explained why he tried to convert all the people underneath his command into expressionless fanatics instead of the normal fanatical kind.

Of course he wrote off the whole hobby thing by telling himself squashing emotions out of others meant he was successfully weaponizing shinobi.

Nevermind that expressive shinobi had proved to be equally effective than his soldiers.

Then again, Danzo might be wisely trying to prevent his men adopting some eccentric behavior. God forbid one of his tools turned into a soldier half as 'youthful' as Maito Gai.

Yes. Un-emotive soldiers were the best. Not to mention, stripping his foot soldiers of even their identities prevented them from forming emotional attachments, which reduce the risk of betrayal to the organization.

Speaking of nameless soldiers, now that Orochimaru was in Konoha -something he knew because the Sannin sent a snake with a note- Danzo needed to send someone disposable, yet competent, to keep an eye on the Snake Sage. And Danzo, having a long list of tools from which to choose, could afford to be picky. So he would send a man who looked non-threatening enough not to rise suspicions, one who could be easily underestimated, but no so much that Orochimaru would feel demeaned by his choice... And the man should be young, yes. Maybe not so much of a man. A boy? Yes, a boy would do. Specially since Orochimaru had such fixation with obtaining the Uchiha boy as a potential vessel, which hinted that the Sannin had a preference for younger boddies.

Maybe assessing a kid would keep the Sanin's attention split? It would be beneficial when Danzo back-stabbed Orochimaru, if his chosen kid-agent served to distract the snake summoner enough to make a mistake. Danzo would undoubtedly get rid of the man then, for Orochimaru was a danger to Konohagakure. Of course, that didn't mean he would be getting rid of the man hastily. After all, there was much profit that could be obtained in a temporary alliance.

It was also wise to choose a kid to handle Orochimaru because it wouldn't be as big of a loss as it would should he perish. After all, there was a lot less invested into the younger ones. And kid soldiers were disposable, even if they showed a lot of promise, since most of the time the young shinobi died before reaching their full potential.

Danzo walked to the heart of the ROOT hideout. A place caved in stone and reinforced in metal. The spot he had stopped at to wait was the intersection of two bridges resilient enough to support an army, but that had a deep bottom underneath, connected to complex labyrinth in which his people and himself could hid if worst came to worst.

Not even a minute after Danzo stood stiffly in the cross-shaped platform, a small figure walked in. The child-soldier couldn't be older than 12, and his black hair and eyes made his pasty-white skin look even more unhealthy.

This kid clearly didn't know the meaning of the word sunbathing.

"Orochimaru has been working on a research that, once it's in our possession, will greatly help Konoha stand above other ninja countries. You shall meet him. Steal his notes, his prototypes, anything that has to do with this research. Once you have stolen what you must, get back to the base. Unseen," Here Danzo made a pause, looked intently to the kid's face looking for a sign of doubt. He found none... though he did found some semblance to a fox in the face of the creepy smiling kid. "If asked for a name, you shall refer to yourself as Sai."

"Sai, is it?" The kid smiled. It took all the self-control gained during his lifetime as a ninja not to punch the expression out of the scrawny twelve year old's face.

"Don't make fake smiles in front of me... or Orochimaru," Danzo ordered. It wouldn't do to have his agent killed before he accomplished anything...

The kid looked like he was about to give a reply, but Danzo was in no mood to waste time chit-chatting. Not when he was about to get a step closer to accomplish his dream and duty of putting his village on top of the world. "Now go."

The words "Sai" would have spoken never got past his fake smirk. He had his orders. In an instant, the kid's sun-deprived body vanished in a Shunshin, leaving his eye-patched superior standing in the middle on the room.

Danzo stroke his chin, callused fingers going over the ever-so-familiar white, x-shaped scar. If the child he just named proved competent enough to survive, Danzo would make sure to order him to read some books to help him with infiltration missions... Or he could just have the kid copy the Aburame tendency of covering their expresions to hide the lack of those. It would probably be a lot better than letting the brat move around smiling like that.

That smile was bound to earn "Sai" instant enemies. And an ease to earn enemies was not a desired trait in a ninja, much less in one that might be sent on incognito missions, or ordered to ensnare others by befriending them.

Who knows, if it all went well, Danzo might even maneuver Sai to take the place of that pink-haired kunoichi, Haruno Sakura, in the genin-team under Hatake Kakashi. It could prove useful for Danzo to have a mole keeping an eye on both Sasuke Uchiha and the Kyuuby Jinchuuriki. Something made easy by getting rid of the unimportant kunoichi civilian, then replacing said kunoichi with one of his own agents.

Yes. The civilian pinkete shall be eliminated in due time. For now, though, Danzo had bigger fish to fry. Namely Orochimaru and his newest achievement.

Little did Danzo know that the true source of the knowledge he desired was, in reality, a pet-doe with a big green ribbon that was going on a merry walk with the Nara matron at that precise moment.

...

Orochimaru looked up to the sky through the canopy of the trees. He would have moved his arms to cover his yellow eyes from the too bright sunlight if he could move them. As things stood, though, Orochimaru was unable to so much as twitch his fingers. His former teacher sure had inconvenienced him by making that Shinigami suck the part of his soul attached to those extremities.

The whole thing was annoying, especially since Kabuto had to feed him like a sappy lover, or a mother feeding an uncoordinated baby.

He had yet to decide which one of the two ideas disturbed him the most.

Kabuto, on the other hand, looked overly static to take care of his needs, dress him and wipe his muscled... The man's devotion bordered on obsession, really.

Orochimaru probably would have killed his assistant for that behavior, if he wasn't so damn useful. Or if Orochimaru could hold a kunai to do it.

But never mind that. The humiliating days of paralyzed limbs were counted. All the Sannin had to do was trick Danzo into thinking he knew what the old bastard was talking about in his letters, get the help he needed to stop being a cripple, then murder Danzo for letting Sarutobi know about his human experimentations all those years ago.

Problem is, Orochimaru, for once, had no idea what Danzo expected him to have achieved.

The Snake Sage was unable to figure out what hidden meaning was behind the word "socks" in the coded message. The contents of it couldn't possibly be literal, though. That much was a given since ninja always wrote seemingly mundane notes full of hidden meanings. However, out of ideas as Orochimaru was, he made sure to pack enough of the rarely-used-by-ninja piece of clothing...

Not that Orochimaru thought those would be useful. He just really, REALLY needed to get Kabuto out of his sight. The Sannin was sure he would have figured out how to strangle his devoted assistant, despite the fact he could not use his hands.

It was in those Kabuto-free moments that Orochimaru's tried to puzzle what Danzo was seeking. It had to be something big enough to risk infiltrating Konoha's most famous missing nin when the village was most vulnerable.

So, since what Danzo was looking for something. And being the timing of the request as it was. Orochimaru knew it could only be something that took place at some point during the invasion the Sannin did during the chunin exams. Orochimaru tried to think the whole content of the letter carefully:

_Socks._

_You put your feet into socks._

_Your feet are part of yourself._

_Socks are also a piece of clothing, something you wear to cover a part of yourself._

_He WORE the body of the Sandaime to cover himself..._

Maybe Danzo wanted his ability to get under people's skin (literally) so he could have himself or his soldiers impersonating people without the risk of other ninja noticing that chakra was fueling the technique? It would make sense with so many Hyuuga in Konoha, not to mention copy-nin Kakashi, and that probably all the dogs of the Kiba clan could smell the true scent of infiltrators under a genjutsu.

The whole conclusion was more of an educated guess than anything else; not to mention it made sense, for Danzo, to desire a way to get into an enemy's territory undetected by wearing other people's body.

It was probably a good thing for Orochimaru that Kabuto, his #1 fan, never asked for explanations, no matter how seemingly absurd a request Orochimaru came up with these days, so he could send him away to get his very needed moments of peace. Unfortunately, Orochimaru couldn't enter into enemy territory without the protection of his assistant, nor remain without him for too long. Not until his hands were fixed, which led the Sannin with an ever-devoted assistant standing close by, hovering about him like a fly on top a pile of shit.

For a moment, Orochimaru couldn't help but curse Kabuto's usefullness. If the Sannin could dispose of the inventor of the 'wipe-ass-no-jutsu' he would do so as soon as Orochimaru was in full control of his body again.

At least Orochimaru could pretend Kabuto wasn't right beside him at the moment if he didn't turn his head around.

The Sannin couldn't help but daydream about potential replacements: Yamanaka Inoichi's daughter came to mind. He had no doubt he could brainwash her into mindless servitude, and that the girl could be then be prompted to obtain the knowledge of his current assistant/workshiper with the famous Yamanaka mind technique.

The only downsides Orochimaru could see was that the she-brat was not strong enough, and she would need time to adapt the medical knowledge she extracted from Kabuto's deranged mind.

After thinking about the matter for about 2 seconds, Orochimaru was seriously considering the merits of having a female assistant. Even if she became a crazed fan, he wouldn't be bothered by the attitude half as much if it came from a younger kunoichi instead of Kabuto. If only because a Kunoichi could sire him a son, and having someone with similar genetic make-up to experiment on could be beneficial for his research.

Before the idea cemented on Orochimaru's mind, an expressionless kid, one who could put up a good fight against the Sanin in a paleness contest, arrived to the cozy part of the forest he was currently in.

Kabuto instantly moved closer to Orochimaru, kunai firmly held on one hand, ready to attack the newcomer. The kid, however, didn't recoil upon the obvious threatening stance. Instead, the kid lowered himself to one knee and waited to be acknowledged.

A ROOT agent then. A young, disposable, harmless-looking one. Orochimaru wasn't impressed by Danzo's logic, but knew he would probably have done something among those lines if the roles were reversed. After all, kids were never all that useful unless they had a bloodlimit, and, Orochimaru could tell from experience, that even then, the bother of waiting them to master their bloodlimit was not worth the reaps of it.

The Sharingan would be an exception, of course. He knew the ultimate eye technique and his ideal vessel were worth the wait, even more so when the wait would mean him not getting into the young body before puberty issues were over.

Finally deciding to focus on Danzo's little tool, Orochimaru nodded and the kid rose and started leading the way silently towards what was probably one of the scattered, minor ROOT bases. Needless to say, he expected to be left waiting for Danzo to arrive since the man surely wanted to make himself seem more important by wordlessly stating that things would be done on his time of convenience. The ass.

The treck to the ROOT base was both uneventful and predictable. Sai made Orochimaru run around in circles for a while, to make difficult for the Sannin to remember the way there, before stopping in front of a hidden trap door behind a group of non-descript bushes. A small leader went down into a pitch black hole that seemed to stretch several dozen meters into the earth. The three of them ignored the leader, jumping blindly to the abysm of the underground organization.

As they descended, an array of old, sound-suppressing arrays muted the noises coming from the forest. And, had they jumped a few minutes latter, they might have heard a distant hiss coming from the other side of the walls.

...

Nara Shikamaru was moving forwards as the after-image of his mother and that damnable doe finally vanished. The young Nara had his heart beating with great speed, losing his cool like he had never before.

It had his mother.

Whatever that thing was (for it certainly was not a doe) had the woman that had raised him up, the one who made his food and frightened both him and his father in a way only she -an authoritative and exasperated mother/wife- could. He had known Mendo was different, that there was an intelligence in it that didn't reflect in that stupidly doe-eyed face. But he even didn't think about the dangers of having an unknown element at home, all he was doing was try to put together the puzzle, to see how the unusual animal could be of benefit to him, his family and his village.

He was a failure as a ninja, for not noticing the threat. And he was a failure as a son for not protecting his mother.

The panicked people around him were clearly his fault. But a part of him was pleased that the Jounin were searching for what they assumed to be Orochimaru...

Then it hit him. A too smart to be a doe, one that had unknown powers and could hiss like a snake. An experiment? A ninja with a rare bloodline to turn into deer? The possibilities were twirling in Shikamaru's head with vengeance. It was entirely possible (and not too far-fetched) to send an agent to spy the main strategists in Konoha. And what better place to hid a leaf than a forest? Surely nobody would even blink when they learnt the Nara had a new deer. Not even his father would suspect of the fake doe if the agent had used a well-timed ninjutsu (so the appearance of the newborn doe matched the form that agent would have as said animal), then keep a low profile until now. Now that there was no Hokage and the town was rebuilding.

And... wasn't the birth of Mendo conveniently around the time the Sandaime began to prepare for the Chunin exams?

"Shikamaru, are you ok?" Koji asked his best friend who, after letting out a scream of anguish due his loss, froze in place, eyes fogged by the twirling ideas that tried to bury the sense of failure and guilt about what happened.

He could have done so many things different, but he didn't, and his sloppy, lazily-executed actions had made him pay too high a price.

"Hey, kids, did you see anything suspicious?" Anko, the snake kunoichi stopped to ask them, the only ones in the block that weren't either running for shelter from the apparent return of Orochimaru, nor running around to search for the source of threat.

Shikamaru looked to Anko with unusually sharp eyes. He knew that Anko, despite the woman acting brash and having a dress code that gave male ninja very happy dreams, was very smart. She was on the T&amp;I department and, more importantly, had a grudge on Orochimaru big enough to get on his case right away. So he blurted his recently formed theory about the sleeper doe-agent, how he believed was planted, when, where, and complaining (but not specifying) about all the information it probably managed to acquire while spying on the Nara household. Anko didn't reply during Shikamaru's tirade, seemingly seeing the merits of the strategy of planting an animal mole into the unsuspecting Nara.

The furious face Anko made as Shikamaru brought up her old teacher being a possible culprit make Shikamaru take an unconscious step back. The kunoichi looked ready to murder and Shikamaru had no doubt the woman would do anything in her power to unravel whether or not the Sannin was actually involved with the doe's unusualness.

"Thank's for telling me, kid. I'll take it from here," and with that Anko vanished, leaving a calmer, but not less worried, Shikamaru. He feared for his mother potentially being in the clutches of Orochimaru… he needed to tell his father what happened as soon as possible.

He didn't have the time to make his way home to search for Shikaku when his team and him were approached by a sick looking ninja. "Oi, you lot," Hayate Gekkō coughed twice, then continued speaking "There are orders to evacuate the area *cough*. Escort the civilians to the shelters *cough* This is a mission. C ranked *cough**cough*," And with that the men left.

Shikamaru didn't look happy with his abruptly assigned duty. He wanted to make his way to the Nara complex, not to the bunker designed for civilians to be guarded in while ninja attacks took place in the village hidden in the leaf.

"Mendokusei," Shikamaru sighed. Maybe, Shikamaru reasoned, he would bump into his father since the chaos in the civilian sector would need all level headed Jounins at the ready for any eventualities. Not to mention, Orochimaru being a missing nin of Konoha knew where all the designated evacuation spots were, which turned those into potential targets if the Sannin was opting for a distraction to his true purpose in Konohagakure.

"Shika, are you ok?" Ino asked worriedly, as if he were about to break.

"We can take care of this if you want," Choji was giving Shikamaru the same concerned look. Shikamaru felt the lightest bit touched by their friends' attitude, but he wouldn't bend for confort. He was't some kid whose mom had been taken away, he was a ninja, a Chunin, and his mother was too (and she was a lot stronger and experienced than him), so he knew she would be fine. She was too frightening to lose against a doe impersonator.

"I'm ok," he tried to convince himself as much as his friends about that one. "Let's get this mission done."

His friends nodded, and if Ino and Chouji noticed the worry in his voice, they said nothing as they started hoarding the civilians towards safety.

...

Nara Shikaku, a man too lazy to walk to the toilet when he was alone in his house's forest, was peeing on a tree of the Nara woods when an unidentified *POP* sound came from his house. Expertly rushing his release and, getting up his pants in a way only a ninja can, he mentally mapped the route he would walk towards his house as he made it there to stealthy discover the source of the unknown sound.

A minute or two latter, him going extra slow not to step on a branch, he discovered his wife and her favorite doe giving each other meaningful looks.

He was really surprised when he noticed a sort of conversation going between them.

Also, by the words exchanged, it appeared the doe did know how to play shogi. He probably owed an apology to his son for that one.

"Would you play with me then?" Shikaku asked out of the blue, startling the two inside into a jump. Huge doe-eyes glared at Shikaku, noticing it was him right after jumping in front of Yoshino protectively. Interesting.

The sound of an alarm filled the air and Shikaku knew that his need to satisfy his curiosity about the doe's apparent intelligence (and the reason why it chose to hide it) would have to wait.

With a look that stated things weren't over, Shikaku, one of the makeshift, temporary leaders of Konoha, rushed out to the Hokage tower, promising himself to get a game out of the intriguing doe.

Yoshino looked at "Rai-chan" with an apologetic look before following her husband at full speed. All able-bodied ninja had a fixed role to play on the times some treat befell the village and Yoshino couldn't carry a doe along with her...

Besides, Rai-chan would he safer being left behind.

If Yoshino had more time to get over the shock of her beloved Rai-chan shunshinning her from one place to another, being able to play shogi and actually understand her words, she might have suspected that the panic in the village had everything to do with the hiss the doe had let out after seeing Shikamaru and his team come out of the alley from wich they were shadowing the doe.

...

Naruto, Tsunade, Shizune and Jiraiya had yet to set foot past the western gate when the sound of alarms filled the air. The Frog Sanin stopped traumatizing Naruto with tales of his sex achievements at the sound; Tsunade, on the other hand, sobered up in a blink, and Shizune merely hugged the very lucky pig that got pressed against those small, but plump, breasts. Sure, they paled against Tsunade's twin melons, but Jiraiya, the super pervert that he was, could appreciate all sizes of fruit.

Sadly, he couldn't enjoy the perks of having female company around during an emergency. And, even though he was too far from to hear the hissing sound that threw the ninja of the Village Hidden in the Leaf into panic, the pattern of the alarm sound and the pattern of the nin-birds flying in the sky let him know exactly where the source of the panic was.

After ten minutes of fast traveling on the rooftops, they found civilians being hoarded by genin and chūnin as was regular procedure on invasions. Only, he couldn't see the invading party, or any new property damage since he took Naruto form the village... nothing was out of the norm if one ignored the jounins jumping on the roofs looking around with intense focus.

Odd.

He had looked around for a threat, he found none. A gasp from behind him had him jump and draw a handful of shuriken ready to strike. He noticed Tsunade's horrified eyes. He followed them to the sight that mortified his fellow Sanin: a kid with a bloody scrape on his left knee -he probably fell at some point during the commotion. The injury was pretty minor, but Tsunade's hemophobia caused her to freeze like she had just seen all her loved ones standing in a pool of their own blood all over again.

"Tsunade, we need to get going," Jiraiya informed. Something was off. He could feel it in his bones. The fact that some ninja began lowering their guards, convinced that it had been a drill, wasn't helping his nerves. His honed instincts were screaming at him that something big was about to happen. And big things in the ninja world meant a lot of innocent lives would be lost.

And without a true leader to govern and unite them all, chaos was going to ensue at the flip of a coin.

They needed to move. Now. Just… Tsunade wasn't moving at all. Jiraiya cursed.

"Naruto, help Shizune move her to a safe spot. Stay together."

"Awww, but Ero-Senin I want to fight," Naruto complained, whiskered cheeks puffing as he pouted.

"Just do it," The Sannin ordered, more serious that Naruto had ever seen him before, then jumped away, hands moving into the now-familiar summon katas.

...

Danzo was very unhappy when the village alarms sounded. He said as much when Orochimaru entered the base, demanding an explanation of the Sannin since the ROOT agents that were on patrol in the area had made sure he knew as soon as possible that every jounin in the village was looking for their most famous missing-nin.

Orochimaru was honestly surprised they knew he was there; he was a careful man, and he had done nothing that could possibly alert even the best sensors Konoha had to offer. So the White Snake asked Danzo what exactly his agents had told him. Unamused, Danzo complied, looking into Orochimaru's face very carefully as he retold word for word what his agent had relied.

_…_

Pain. So much pain. His body hurt like it was about to fall to pieces. But he didn't give up. He couldn't. He had fought too hard to get where he had, to have his dreams stolen after he put so much effort.

So he rose his leg into a kick, green spandex stretching as sweat poured from his forehead.

He was alone. And not just because he had removed himself as far as he could from his fellow human beings, but because not even Gai-sensei was standing by him as he fought to recover of the terrible damage an out of control Gaara had done to his body.

How could Gai-sensei of all people ask him to rest when his career as a ninja was in the verge of ending? And what else was out there for him if it did?

The first kick was followed by another, then another. The yells coming out of his mouth were half youthful passion half anguish. He couldn't hear anything with the blood pumping on his ears. He didn't notice when his wobbly legs slipped on a pool of his own sweat. His face met the muddy ground, his crutch falling far away from him. He stayed down, motionless, tears and sweat mixed as they rolled down his face.

His life was over.

He passed out before the alarms started sounding. He didn't see Nara Shikaku and his wife pass near where he collapsed, neither did he noticed the small, green-eyed doe that was stumbling on the same path the Naras had passed by, making it's way towards his unconscious body.

_To Be Continued._

* * *

**_EXTRA: Petition. Shogi matchs._**

"And this is the king," Shikamaru pointed to the most important piece of wood on the board. Mendo The Doe looked vacantly at him as he explained every piece blindly being pointed since he had long since memorized the position and size of each piece of that particular shogi set. As Shikamaru finished explaining how the king moved and how the game was over when you took it, he wondered if the doe understood what he was telling it.

Shikamaru moved the first piece: a wordless statement that the game had started. In turn Mendo stared, and stared, and kept on staring. Shikamaru's attentive eyes were, for once, not on the board but on the other player. His concentration was fully into the green doe-eyed face of the tiny, 4 month-old doe. That same concentration he had now in the animal had been the reason why he hadn't noticed his father's momentary shock at him explaining a doe how to play shogi.

He was also unaware of him being thought as crazy by the Nara Jounin.

But that's besides the point. The only thing that seemed to exist in the world for a moment were himself, the doe and the Shogi board.

An intense moment of silence and doubt was broken as the doe awkwardly raised its foreleg and stepped over one piece with it's hoof, uncoordinatedly managing to move it unto another spot in a trembling zig zag.

Apparently, the doe had understanded him.

Shikamaru moved a second piece, Mendo did too. He prepared a formation, got ready for attack; she built a defensive front. Little by little, the clumsy movements became less erratic, though he did still have to get pieces near the one that was being moved back to their proper places when the doe bumped them out of spots in her clumsy playing. The doe even got the moves wrong every now and then, him having to repeat the explanation of how that particular piece moved...

He wasn't exactly sure when the doe had gotten the upper-hand.

He felt shock when the doe cornered his king into a checkmate.

He couldn't believe he lost to a doe.

Still incredulous at the face of his defeat, Shikamaru rose his face and looked to the still blank-faced doe. That face ticked him off more than any expression he had seen before in a human being. The doe looked downright dumb. And he lost to that dumb-looking animal.

He wanted a rematch.

Fixing the board anew, he started again. The doe took less time to make its moves. He wasted less time fixing the board as the doe's coordination rose a little with every move.

He lost again.

He started over. He lost a third time.

The blank face of Mendo was making it very hard not to punch the doe. Then, when he thought he couldn't get any more riled up by the situation, it stuck his tongue at him with a blank face.

It was an effective taunt (whether or not the doe knew the meaning of the gesture). This meant war. He would not stop util he got his victory!

...

He won.

He was not happy.

If he hadn't thought the doe as irritating before he did so now. In fact, he felt increasingly upset every time the doe fell for an obvious trap (something it hadn't done in any other matches), then it would make small mistakes that a man of lesser intellect would have mistaken as the opponent being distracted. He knew better, though. The doe had let him win.

He looked up to the doe again. The same blank face greeted him. There was no glimpse of intelligence, no evidence of the strategist that had beaten him every match so far.

Shikamaru's eye twitched.

He shooed the doe back into the forest, lest he tried to make himself feel better by chopping it to pieces. Not that he would actually do so. Chopping a doe (no matter how small) not only required a lot of effort (specially when he imagined all the blood he would have to clean off the wooden tiles), but it also would be too troublesome to explain to his parents why he decided to murder the animal.

For now, the young Nara needed time alone to rethink his strategy, figure out why he lost, then come up with a new game-plan the next time he had a match against Mendo. It would take him four hours of intense planning, but he got his strategy at last.

Sadly, he could not convince the doe to play again when he invited it back in (forced it back into the room would be more accurate). Standing in front of the board, Mendo simply looked him in the eyes, face blank, then moved away perfectly pretending to be as dumb as his fellow deer, walking all over the board before wandering aimlessly inside the room making as much of a mess as it could in the sparsely furnished room.

Shikamaru wanted to force it to play with him again, his hands were twitching to get a grip on it and drag it back by it's neck if necessary. Unfortunately, Asuma-sensei came knocking down his door. The Ino-Shika-Cho (Second Generation) had a mission away from the village. It would be a while before he got home.

He would get a proper rematch when he was back. He assured himself.

Little did Shikamaru know that the doe that defeated him would get another victory while he was absent. With the strong-willed Yoshino as a cooing shield for the doe, Nara Shikamaru wouldn't have his rematch until the after the new Hokage sat in the big, comfy chair, and wore the mandatory silly, white hat.

Needless to say, by wrapping Nara Yoshino to her (figurative) little finger, Harry doe had achieved the ultimate victory in the Nara complex.

**_End of the Extra_**

* * *

.

* * *

**AN:** Sorry for the delay. I don't have a very excuse for it, other than on the 29th of July I got the whole thing done beautifully... only for the internet to fall when I was about to save it. Needless to say, I was upset I lost what I was working on. I refused to write for a month out of sheer pettiness… point is, this one came too late, and doesn't have anything added that made it worth the wait. Sorry about that. **I do want to point out that Anko is still Anko, the confrontation with Orochimaru has yet to happen and Mendo is in her way to meet a very much alive Lee. **

Also, I finally decided which of my many many plotbunnies I was going to make into an actual HPxNaruto fic… But I need someone to run things by. Any volunteers for a pre-read of the first chapter of a fic that I have written? I have two versions of it and I cannot make my mind which I like the most.

Anyway. Thanks for reading. Keep up being awesome readers who REVIEW your favorite doe-centric fic.


	7. Doeable

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

**AN:** Sorry for the delay, but I just started university and will be juggling studies and word. Also my new fic "Harry Potter and the World of Shinobi" is up. Please go read it after reading this.

**Edit 03-11-15:** I noticed a lot of mistakes, on top of my forgetting to include an extra after a chapter solely made of fluff. So, at the bottom I am including a little extra I planed to add on the next one, but that I will be putting on this one instead since it kind of matches the fluff of the chapter.

_**Betaed by: Ivanoma**_

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* * *

Chapter 7: Doeable

Harry-doe watched as Yoshino and her lazy husband made their way outside the Nara complex in a haste and, to be honest, the doe wasn't all that sure why they were leaving in such a rush… not that she wasn't grateful, for Harry-doe most certainly needed time to calm down.

In less than 10 minutes she had bumped into a Malfoy (or someone who looked just like one) making Harry react in the most ridiculous manner, then the doe he had become got busted by Yoshino as a being who possessed intelligence beyond that of any deer in the complex, then Shikaku entered the picture and demanded a game of shogi, _then_ they left "her" alone while running faster than Harry had ever seen people run in his past life and this one combined.

Yep. Those sure were an eventful 10 minutes.

Normally, Harry would have considered staying put and agonize about how the very nice status-quo that 'she' had been enjoying the last few days might come to an end. However, there was something in the way Yoshino looked behind herself that made Harry know that the woman was heading towards danger.

Harry's doe instincts were yelling at her to huddle in the shadows of the forest, maybe even find a cave to stay in until Mama Yoshino came back to tell her everything was safe again. On the other hand, his inner Auror was yelling at him to give chase to the one person who had become family in this shitty second life. Harry imagined his old self giving chase, wand in hand, with a dozen or so of his officers covering his back as he blasted through enemy territory. Yes, that was **him**, alright? Gryffindor through and through. But _her_ doe instincts... Goddammit, was she a doe or was he a man? Yes sh-HE was a man. He was Harry Potter, Man-Who-Conquered, and HE would be damned if he let his new furry body get the better of **him** and spoil it.

So Harry took initiative and jumped, somehow managing to leap out of the window with little effort. His doe-muscles felt stronger than ever as his focused will gave shape to his new body's magic. The magic pumping around his cuadruped _female_ body felt foreign and oddly orderly. His-her new magic lacked the chaotic nature of the one he had grown so used to in his life of a wizard. Thankfully, though, the principle of will being the most important component of getting magic to work remained a constant, allowing him speeds a deer should never have been able to posses; albeit Harry knew he must have been slow as a snail compared with the two ninja that made their way outside the compound minutes before he did.

Harry-doe rushed through the forest, making the world around him become as much as a blur as it had done when he was riding his Nimbus 2000 for the first time (albeit he knew his speed now was not beyond the standard school broom the likes of which he rode in Professor Hooch's class all those years ago). The doe figured the blurriness must be because the eyes of a doe weren't meant to endure the speeds he was traveling at... Probably getting glasses to protect his eyes wouldn't be such a bad idea? After all, he had worn those twice what most people lived, so he was sure he would have no problem getting used to them in this body. Even if the idea of a doe wearing lenses was so ridiculous it was almost funny.

...

The boost of speed wasn't enough for Harry-doe to catch up. Not to mention that after a while the reincarnated wizard realized he didn't know where he was going, or which road the Nara couple had gone through. Had Harry been reborn into a dog, he might have been able to follow Yoshino's scent but, as things stood, his body was not fit for tracing... at least not yet. Magic could do a lot of things, and he was fairly sure he would eventually be able to figure out a way to adapt the Point Me spell. But that was neither here nor now. Truth is, Harry became aware of the fact he had no chance of catching up, but was against turning back because it would feel like he would be abandoning Yoshino and, worse still, he would be failing himself.

Besides, Harry Potter always ended up in the middle of all things dangerous, whether he intended to or not; so if Yoshino ended up in mortal danger, Harry might end up at the same place, then try to help her. Even at the cost of his life with... well, he wasn't too reluctant to lose. Honestly, if he ended up getting killed he would live on in some other universe or whatever, but if Yoshino died she would be leaving behind her family and home. He could say in good authority that losing family sucked big time. Besides, Harry didn't have a home anymore. And the closest thing to home he had was Yoshino. If she died he would be drifting again with nothing to hold onto.

It was incredible how strongly attached he had become to the woman in such short span of time, but since she was the closest thing to a mother he had ever had, it was no surprise he loved the sweet but strict woman above any other being in a world where even children were trained to become murderers... plus he had a good record of lifelong friends made on the spot: point and case, Ronald Weasley.

As the doe's body got pushed to keep runing, energy on Harry's body was rapidly dwinling, like his magic was running out or something, leaving him weak-legged, forcing him to move at a more sedate pace. It was after 5 minutes or so of going at a normal doe speed that Harry found something that made him stop in his tracks: a hurt kid.

A kid in hideous green tights, but a hurt kid nonetheless.

Harry felt that he had to stop, he just had to. Even his desire to follow Yoshino so he might be of help (not that he had figured how exactly) could not rival his chivalrous l need to stop and help someone so obviously in need of assistance… and a new wardrobe, but that was beside the point.

_'Hey, kid, are you alive?'_ Harry mentally prodded, restraining himself from making any out-loud comment in case it came out in Parseltongue. Almost as if the kid had heard the unsaid words, he unburried his face from the dirt, then looked up to doe-harry. Harry-doe, on the other hand looked down at him with mild concern, then surprise, when the Boy-Who-Became-a-Doe noticed the unusually thick eyebrows the kid had. They kind of reminded Harry of Hagrid's.

"A… deer?" Eyebrow Kid asked dazed, chocking a bit at the words. Harry continued to stare, feeling kind of awkward that his doe-vocal chords left him utterly unable to respond.

The kid shook his head to thoughts only he was privy to, before he got up and picked up a crutch. Harry had expected the kid to use the crutch he picked as a support to start making his way back to the village so he culd get some help to re-wrap his dirty bandages, least his muddied woulds got infected. So imagine Harry-doe's surprise when Eyebrow Kid, with a face full of pain, dirt and blood, started kicking the air over and over… Harry might not be an expert on ninja culture, but he was pretty damn sure that even Shinobi would not approve of a child so badly hurt he was in need of a crutch doing exercise in the middle of a forest when ruckus was going down in town.

Someone needed to stop Eyebrow Kid before he hurt himself.

With a mix of Gryffindor courage and stupidity, Harry stepped closer to the kid, who, upon noticing Harry-doe, aborted a kick that might have beheaded the green-eyed quadruped, putting a lot of extra pressure on the leg he was using to pivot himself into the kick. This lead to the spandex-wearing youngster falling into the ground with a wince and a growl of frustration.

Harry looked at the kid with the poker face all does are born with as the kid cursed. Then Eyebrow Kid started to weep and punch the ground until blood started to damp the already stained bandages around his hands.

The sight of the distraught kid pulled Harry's heartstrings. Harry's body was screaming at him to get away from someone capable of cracking the ground with his fist, but the idea of any of his children,grandchildren or great grandchildren suffering like that made Harry feel centuries old again. And old Harry knew better than most about how a bit of human (even animal) warmth could go a long way to soothe a bleeding heart.

The Nth punch to the ground was stopped when Harry-doe's nose softly bumped the side of the child's head, snapping Eyebrow Kid of his self-harming trance. The kid turned to Harry-doe, earning himself a face full of tongue in a gesture that was usually reserved for dogs.

Eyebrow Kid looked at the doe with mild surprise, which was an improvement on Harry's book, so the doe decided to do a repeat of the face-licking despite the awful taste of sweat and mud courtesy of Eyebrow Kid's early face-plant and kicking practice. The second lick registered better than the first one, and the kid let out a small smile. "Are you trying to cheer me up?" Eyebrow Kid smiled and moved his hand to pet the fluff of hair on Harry's head. Harry stayed put, letting out a soft whine in response as he pressed his head into the kid's palm.

Harry's approach was rewarded with a sudden hug as the kid sobbed into his frail doe-body, then, chocked words came out as the kid let out bottled up feelings the same way a small kid would confide their nightmares to their teddy bear.

And of course, Harry listened, because even if he didn't understand half the words the kid was speaking, sometimes just having an ear to hear you out made the pain a bit easier to bear.

_To Be Continued._

_._

* * *

**_Extra: First meal_**

Yoshino looked to the small baby doe as she came back from the bushes, head down and giving her a shy look she recognized from the time Shikamaru was still wetting the bed. How one deer could be so cute to her, who had dealt with newborns of the species for years, was a wonder.

There was still something that worried her though: the little doe was really underweight.

She mentally went over the list of reasons her doe might have for not been feeding properly, which lead to Yoshino to check Rai-chan's teeth to see if she had gotten something there that would hurt (like a broken teeth or a splinter). Rai-chan had nothing out of the ordinay in her mouth, neither she saw anything in the feces she noticed the doe had left behind the bushes.

Maybe she caught some sort of sickness? But the doe was acting healthy and cheerful, unlike sick deer usually acted.

It was a puzzle.

But thankfully that one solved itself when she saw the doe eat for the first time. And despite deer not being the most expresive of animals, it was easy enough to see the reluctance to eat because green eyes would glare to the grass, then bit only the unmudied tips of the grassblades, and pretty much swallowed without chewing. That couldn't be good for digestion.

A crazy thought crossed Yoshino as she got back into the house to prepare a deer-friendly vegetable soup, a recipe that was long since perfected for older deer that lived long enough to loose teeth.

The moment she was done with the (admitedly hastly made) soup, Rai-chan looked at her with the ever so cute tilt to her furry head as she slowly lowered the plate to floor. Cerefully the doe moved closer, looking up at her as if to ask permision, at which Yohsino noded, and Rai-chan gave the liquid an experimental lick. Soon enough the plate was empty and twing green eyes begged for more food.

Yoshino served Rai-chan a second bowl, then a third, and when the doe was finally full she cuddled into her leg. Kami was that doe cute.

If Yoshino had entretained that she would be keeping this doe for herslef before, now she was possitive her son wouldn't be getting it back. Ever.

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**AN:** Ok, this chapter was cheesy and fillery, but I couldn't imagine it going any other way since I put Lee in the last one. After all, if Harry met a hurt kid he would stop to help, period. And even a youthful youth such as Lee was bound to cry sometimes.

Love you guys.

**Don't forget to check out "Harry Potter and the World of Shinobi after reviewing**... and review that one too. Also, I will be posting a new fic soon "Dreading the Sunshine" deeply inspired by "Dreaming of Sunshine" by Silver Queen. Keep an eye open for future updates (^.^)/


	8. Doenapped

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

**AN:** I put a poll on my profile about possible future fics... one of which I will start after I finish this one... or another one of my longfics at least.

_Edit 13/03/16: I re-wrote part of the chapter. I got some help from Qinetiq, who helped be see why the previous chapter sucked, so I worked on getting a bit more humor. Incidentally, I included an extra, and make a promise of working on a much faster update on the next one as an apology._

_Also, special thanks to AnFan-n-More who suggested the name for this chapter._

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Chapter 8: doenapped.

As was stated at some point before, Harry was a man. Not a macho man, but a mainly man at heart… which is why he felt awkward when caught in the middle of a hug with eyebrow boy. After all, no matter how grandfathery the approach had been, he knew more than well that he must look like a bloody plush toy with all the cute fur and the big green ribbon.

If pissed Harry off, because it occurred to him that it was his new girly side, instead of his old empathetic side, which sent him to help out the crying kid… which is not to say he wouldn't have gone to care for the boy, but maybe he could have come up with a council that didn't involve him immersing himself into a talk about feelings and tears.

But back to the getting caught in the sissy moment, a further reason for feeling mortified was that, instead of ogling at the woman with the huge knockers in a dress that was little more than crisscrossed thread, he was more worried in figuring out if her color should be classified as grey or purple.

That, for sure, was a clear sign that he would have failed one of those "Gay tests" that he stumbled upon on the internet one memorable time his daughter tried to teach him how to work online banks, because she wanted a credit card, and he would be needing to have one so he could transfer the payment from his. He agreed to it right away, not because he wanted an account, but because it was a way to avoid going to the mall (at least the Muggle ones) when it came to shopping…

Funny thing is, every time he type something wrong (sometimes when he did write things right) nude women would pop on the searcher. How searching for "I can't pay my credit card" would lead him into a very graphic webpage about exotic pole dancers, was a mystery to him.

But back to the forest with the woman that had a distinctive lack of nipples. she was standing on a tree, eyebrow raised. Harry wriggled a bit, making eyebrow boy finally snap out of his crying. He also looked up to the woman, recognition lighting up his eyes. "Anko-san?"

...

"Anko-san?" Gai's crippled brat asked.

"Yoh, kid. Shouldn't you be resting at the hospital?" she inquired, not actually giving a damn that the kid escaped the hospital again. In fact she was sure she would do the exact same thing if the roles were revered... but that was neither here not now. "I see that you got yourself a new pet... I thought deer were a Nara thing," She wanted to know about why he was with Orochimaru's experiment, and figured making snarky comments was a good way as any to pry for information.

"She is not mine, she came to me a little bit ago. It clearly belongs to someone," he eyed the green ribbon "probably got lost... and it probably belongs to the Nara. Afer all, Anko-san, they are the only ones in the village who own deer." Every word he spoke was void of the exuberating energy he and his teacher were known for. It was weird to see Gai's mini me look so somber.

"Look, kid, I hate to break it to you, but you being here is not a good idea. There was an danger alarm triggered not long ago in the village. There is a chance Orochimaru is in town... and that your furry little friend has something to do with him." The kid eyed the lying animal, then looked back to her with a expression full of disbelief.

"What would a doe have anything to do with Orochimaru? I thought he was more of a snake-guy."

"Well, I got word from the Nara boy that it could be a spy... only one way to find out if that's true." With no more prompt, she tossed a shuriken to the downed doe. Lee, caught unarmed and completely by surprise, couldn't react in time to save the animal... then Gai's kid and the doe vanished with a pop of displaced air, then appeared five feet behind where they had been.

The crippled gennin looked ready to puke, arms still around the doe that continued to glare at her.

A Shunshin no Jutsu. A variation of the instant move technique Konoha shinobi used.

"See?" Anko pointed out, Lee let go of the quadruped. It stood in front of the gennin, in what she assumed was a defensive position. That green, doe-eyed glare was probably the most nonthreatening-looking thing she has ever seen.

Anko moved again, fast and focused, then punched the doe on the nose.

...

Harry felt stars dance in her eyes. There was anger bubbling in her little furry chest because he had seen the move with the clarity he saw a Snitch in the pit, could draw the trajectory... but her new body was unable to duck, muscle memory of his past as as duelist nonexistent. The-Boy-Who-Became-a-Doe was also in pain, death by being sucker-punched was a very lame way to go for a man known to have offed his first dark lord at fifteen months old.

To be fair, though, he was no longer a man.

Harry swaggered, stumbling forwards blinded more out of an old habit that real hope of achieving something. Needless to say, he was punched back to the ground.

Soon enough, Harry felt her body being picked up. "Where are you taking it, Anko-san?" eyebrow kid sounded saddened, but didn't try to stop the woman from taking her away.

"You are probably better not knowing it, kid, Anko declared ominously, then vanished in a swirl of leaves.

...

Meanwhile in an underground facility.

Danzo and Orochimaru stood on opposite sides of an underground bridge. They had already finished exchanging pleasantries, veiled jabs about the past, and settled the misunderstanding about it being Orochimaru's fault that the Konoha Shinobi were in high alert by the presence of a giant serpent -which nobody had truly seen, but some claimed to anyways.

"There is much to be gained if we work together once more," Danzo declared, his sole un-patched eye fixed on Orochimaru's yellow ones.

"That might be the case. But first, I want to see proof that you can, indeed, fix my arms," Orochimaru bartered.

With a head nod, Danzo summoned one of his agents, who brought a vial puke-colored substance. "This one is a prototype, a promising sample, one that my agents are working to show more permanent results." Danzo walked, then pressed the syringe to one of his lifeless arms. Upon getting the substance on his body, the fingers twitched, then Orochimaru prompty felt his arms working again. For a few seconds, then they went back to being useless and unfeeling.

"Impressive," Orochimaru declared, seeing the brief moments of mobility "Now I suppose you are going to ask me some proof of my investigations in return."

Danzo nodded, "Of course," Danzo agreed, then added.

"What if I don't know what what experiment you want me to reveal?" Orochimaru asked flatly, not giving away how true that statement was.

"We both know you do. And I will be giving you the research notes of the serum when you give me the ones I want. My agents have been working on the sample I gave you for a really long time, and some of the ingredients are quite hard to come by. Even for a man of your resources it would be impossible to replicate without that knowledge."

And in that venue the two men continued trying to one-up the other. When they (Danzo, Orochimaru and Kabuto) would eventually part ways, the Sannin would have his genius assistant to check his blood and try to dig the serum to dissect the components. It was an advantage that Danzo was unaware of how talented Kabuto really was, so his assistant did manage to isolate the substance. While it would probably take a while, Orochimaru was positive he would be getting some useful data out of it.

As for his deal with Danzo... there would be a snowy day in Suna before he would trust the old War Hawk again. Needless to say he walked away from Konoha with his creepily devoted assistant as soon as the Root kid Danzo sent to show them the way out left them alone for the night.

For once, Orochimaru would be the one to get the last laugh against Danzo...

Incidentally, Orochimaru was glad that the crazy idea of turning himself into a giant, white, mutant snake might not be necessary anymore.

...

Nara Shikaku looked lazily towards the white-haired man dismounting a giant frog. Jiraia of the Sanin was always a drag to deal with, even when it didn't involve the lengthy list of complaints from the female ninjas that were sent on his way every time the man peeped into the bath. As things stood, the research team had been working on and off on a permanent ninjutsu to prevent anyone from taking a peep from outside the bathhouse, and permanent, deadly traps had been put in ever tree surrounding the female baths.

The accidents from unsuspecting kids playing ninja on the area were something Shikaku entirely blamed on the man in front of him.

But never mind Shikaku's personal feelings, Jiraia of the Sanin was a very efficient -if unorthodox- ninja. So he made a status report.

_To Be Continued_

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…

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_Extra: Doe duties_

Shikamaru looked at his parents with a lazy expression, unhappy that they would put him in charge of all baby deer, cutting time from his already taxing schedule. He needed to be training for the Chunnin examns, not learning how to bottle feed the animals of the compound.

"Why do I need to do it now?" Shikamaru stalled his duty.

"Shikamaru, when I was about your age I had already experienced how to take tabs on a the offspring of the deer my father had too care off. And I understand you are busy with the chunnin exams, but being in those exams means you should be mature enough to take part on your clan duties," Shikaku gave him a rare stern look, "I know I can trust you with this one. No Nara has ever failed to balance their duties to the village and to the herd."

"Mendokusei," Shikamaru drawled, this was going to be such a fastidious thing to get stuck doing.

Shikamaru took out a notepad and some writing utensils and went out to check on the babies. Each doe that had birthed had found a safe spot to keep their babies, which meant he had to look all over for each and every single one of the 6 that had fawns in a different hidden location.

Fortunately, the familiarity of the forest that was his backyard cut his job for him.

The first week there was little to be noted, the babies were healthy, fur still with white splotches, no injuries, no infections… then came the second week and he noticed an odd one in the herd. A small doe, one that grew thin instead of chubby and barely grew. He noticed the mother didn't stay close to the little doe, which had odd-colored eyes and a bald spot in a shape of a thunderbolt.

The next morning, as Shikamaru followed the instructions of a care manual for underweight foals, he decided to keep his new duties secret from the female of his team. After all, the baby doe fitted that what he knew women considered as cute, and the least he needed was Ino to come to his home lured by her innate motherly instincts, then waste her day nagging him about leaving his poor mother taking care of all the house chores.

He also didn't know if he would ever live down the fact that he spent his free time wearing an apron and bottle-feeding babies.

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**AN:** I know it's not a great chapter, but inspiration was low... really low. In fact I didn't have the inspiration for a name of the chapter (though I didn't think that was an excuse to keep you from waiting any longer).

Can you toss me suggestions for the name of this chapter? Random words with 'doe' (fake ones count) in them are appreciated too, because I don't have a clue of what to call the next one which might or might not include Inoichi trying to dig stuff out of a doe's mind.


	9. Doeminded (part 1)

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

**IMPORTANT AN:** I made changes to the past chapter on the 13/03. The people who read the last chapter when it still lacked a name need to go over it or won't be able to make much sense of this one. Sorry for the trouble to those who read then. I put an extra there to redeem myself to them (the changes are only there before the first line break).

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Chapter 9: Doeminded (part 1).

Losing blood is never a happy subject. It makes the poor sod with the injury hurt and, if the blood loss is big enough, get dizzy and even die. Not that Harry-doe's nosebleed was anywhere life threatening, but he was getting dizzy... which, to be fair, might have everything to do with the fact that Harry was being carried on a shoulder, with a nosebleed, and the "vehicle" was fast and jostling, and was making his stomach flop in a way reminiscent of his first travel on the knight buss... plus the nosebleed. Don't forget the nosebleed.

So, as the world moved around Harry!Doe in a dizzy blur, the doe dangled like a hunt trophy, or a poor animal hit by a truck on a road before getting carried by a skimpy assassin.

Despite the motion sickness, blood-loss dizziness, the anger, the confusion, the leftover embarrassment (from his latest sissy moment) and the always present exasperation with Fate (and more recently the entity known as Death), Harry still had the presence of mind to plan what to do next: play dumb. Which wasn't much of a plan, not really. Since it was mostly winging it when all inevitably went to hell.

...

"An explanation would be good," Ibiki rubbed the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

"Well, sir. That is a doe," Anko replied cheekily, in a tone so chirpy nobody would think it natural.

"I'm perfectly aware of that, Mitarashi. What I want to know is why you put a tied up deer on top of my desk instead of patrolling like you were supposed to," he clarified, then rose an eyebrow, "Specially after you decided you needed to be you out there, without consulting your superior."

"Well…" she trailed in an infuriating sing song voice. Ibiki's eye twitched. She noticed the man's bad mood so she cut the nonsense short "I spoke with Shikaku's boy, and he told me there was a real possibility this doe was a spy of Orochimaru."

Ibiki took a long moment to process that statement, then looked towards the peculiar green-eyed doe, which promptly stopped glaring at his subordinate, giving him a withering look from a deceitfully impassive face.

"I shouldn't have to be taking care of this shit… Mitarashi! before you try anything with the animal, bring Shikaku here. It would be poor judgment to take the word of a gennin over that of the Jounin commander, and if Shikaku's brat noticed something amiss, you can bet your ass his father did."

"Hai, boss!" Anko gave him a mock-salute, then vanished… leaving the doe on his desk.

Ibiki looked down to the doe, then rubbed the bridge of his nose again. He should have told her to take the damned thing off his desk before ordering Mitarashi to go. Why? because the kunoichi was a moron who didn't care the implicit "take this damned thing of my desk", and left it there when she should have just dump it somewhere. Anywhere. As long as it wasn't on his desk.

Now Ibiki had to deal with his usual mountain of highly sensitive reports, a doe, Anko Mitarashi, the Nara's, the fact that Anko thought the Nara doe was a Orochimary spy, which also meant they would need to go through all the usual procedure for village betrayers... on a doe. Then, after the whole matter was settled he had to clean the blood on the desk and figure out a way to make his office stop smelling like a butcher's shop. Sure, he could dump the last 2 things on the list to an intern, but Ibiki knew it was never wise to leave anyone wander into his office, where so much sensitive info was hoarded.

So he got to spend a good portion of his day with doe, waste time on this crackpot theory, then clean the blood in his office on top of the already long list of shit he had to work on today.

If Ibiki discovered this was Anko trying to be funny, he would be scaring her favorite dango chef so badly he would have to move his shop to the next village.

On the bright side, there was a couple of sound ninja that were caught last time that had yet to be broken and, to be fair, only one was necessary... Which meant he could indulge himself a bit (or a lot) in the next interrogating session.

But the fun part of his job would have to wait. Right now he needed to move the doe to his usual T&amp;I room of operations, then send a nin bird to Inoichi. A little glimpse from the blond into the doe's mind, then Ibiki would be dumping the whole doe thing on Anko because, frankly, the idea of Orochimaru training deer to spy was a total nonsense. That man could be all kinds of fucked up, but Ibiki didn't see Spy Deer as a rational option to the snake Sanin thematic modus operandi. Ever.

For the moment, though, Ibiki had a doe to deal with. Joy.

None too gently, Ibiki picked the doe by the rope tied around the doe's leg and started making his way towards his usual interrogation room.

...

Inoichi had been making a pretty bouquet of tulips when he saw the nin bird flying on a too familiar coded pattern. To be more specific, Inoichi was trying to make the same bouquet for the second time. The first time he got interrupted by the false alarm of an invasion, then the second time he started with the flower arragement he got summoned by T&amp;I, which was... typical, if he was to be honest. He might be retired, but he was too useful to be let of the hook, not to mention he was the most competent Yamanaka mind reader alive.

With a resigned and apologetic look towards his wife, he put the flowers back on the table, then flash-stepped out of the room.

...

Konoha was back in a state of calm. The civilians were out of the safe houses, the hokage candidate was no longer under a panic attack by the sight of a bloody scrap, and Ichukaru Ramen was back in busyness just in time for the rush hour so. As far as Naruto was concerned, everything should be OK in the world... only it wasn't. Ero-Senin had taken his wallet again and Naruto didn't have money to buy Miso ramen.

If he found out Ero-Senin was fooling around while Naruto took care of Tsunade-baachan, then he would get pissed and hid all of Ero-Sennin's pervy books. Naruto's stomach rumbled, then hungry blue eyes landed on the pig. Tonkotsu ramen would be good right about now.

Tonton, noticing the look Naruto was giving him, stiffened and started sweating.

Shizune, who was more than used to seeing that look towards Tsunade's nin-pig, sighed. "Let's get something to eat."

Upon hearing those words Naruto let out a cheer, and jumped doing a double fist bump into the air "Shizune-neesan is the best!"

"Who says we are paying for your food?" Tsunade huffed, and Naruto started to complain abut stingy old women. Which, predictably, started a round of petty discussions. Shizune looked silently to the exchange, wishing Tsunade was didn't take out her bad moon on the kid. Then again, being back at Konoha probably was making her revive a lot of things she had tried to left behind, and the fighting might be a coping mechanism.

Still, was a bit of maturity too much to ask?

...

When Anko finally got back to T&amp;I with _not only_ Jounin Comander Nara Shikaku, but with a Toad Sanin tag-along, Ibiki could feel the migrane he got explaining to Inoichi that the Yamanaka was pulled out of his retirement to mind walk a doe, get 10 times worse. The repeat of the briefing was as necessary as it was ridiculous, and Ibiki felt like punching someone. Preferably Anko.

"Anything you want to share, Shikaku?" Inoichi asked with a rose eyebrow.

"Troublesome," he declared lazily. Nobody was impressed by the opening. He kept going, though, and the Nara got everyone's attention. "Rai, the doe, is my wife's pet of sorts... and Shikamaru's occasional shogi opponent."

Silence stretched for a whole minute as people tried to digest the second half of that statement.

"Your son has been playing with your deer?" Inoichi asked incredulous. Shikaku shrugged.

"So you have an unusually smart baby doe?" Jiraia looked to the doe in the room, the poor animal immobilized by a bunch of seals and ropes, as protocol dictated they do with hostiles under interrogation. The sight of those green doe-eyes on the baby doe with the bright green ribbon would probably make animal right activist have an apoplexy, even more so given that the adorable animal had the tell tale tracks of blood stuck on the fur of its little face.

"It does look unusually calm for a captive wild animal." practically everyone in the room had noticed what Inoichi pointed out. The Nara especially since does are never prone to bouts of bravery. The doe, hearing such proclamation huffed. It looked as though it was thought the situation was as absurd to it than it was to them.

Irritated and wanting to get this all over with, Inoichi let the other men known he was going to start. A few hand-signs later and Inoichi was soon delving into the mind of the captive doe.

_To Be Continued._

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**AN:** I did consider putting the mind walking part, but I figured you would rather get this much now instead of waiting the whole thing when I do put it all together... not to mention it looked like too much of a good place to cut this chapter short. Look out for part two of Demanded :3

Ps. If I ever think of an extra for this one, I will let you know.


	10. Doeminded (part 2)

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

**AN:** I hurried up as much as I could to write this chapter. I know the last one was a mean cliffhanger, but the mood of this part and the last one was too different.

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Chapter 10: Doeminded (part 2).

Harry Potter had been a lot of things during his long life, but a master Occlumens was not one of those things; in fact, he had sucked big time to the point not even Severus Snape in all his sneering glory had been unable to hammer the instinct of keeping a threatening wizard in front of you out of your head. And that was pretty much what the basics of the basics boiled to: One wizards attacked, another defended, and the most adept of the two got out with what they wanted.

Given that Harry could never top Voldemort in experience or power fast enough, Snape had focused on getting Harry to want to keep people hard enough to make up for the gap and give Lily's son a true fighting chance against experienced Legilimens'.

Of course, this fact was something Harry didn't get at the time, but well after the Greasy Git had become someone Harry respected a lot. And it was because Harry grew to respect, even admire, Severus Snape that Harry decided to honor the man by learning that which the Order's spy had once tried to teach him.

That Harry would go to Hermione for help was to be expected, as was that she wanted in on the opportunity to learn some arcane magic that had little chance of ever becoming useful to her. Ron simply rolled his eyes and left the room with the excuse of needing to make lunch (which was kind of true since Hermione could hardly cook anything more complicated than a Sandwich), and so 2/3 of the golden trio studied while the remaining 1/3 cooked and stuffed himself with whatever he could find. The more things changed, the more remained the same between them.

Hermione managed to create her first minds-cape after two weeks of trying... It took Harry 30 years. Of course, he didn't spend all that time meditating and trying to shape things or anything of the sort, but he did sit cross-legged most Sundays for about an hour to try and make the basic plate in which he could order his thoughts and memories and arm his defenses.

In a rare show academic support, Ron had eventually offered to study with Harry for old time's sake... only to make both Harry and Hermione frustrated when, after 4 days of half-assed effort, the redhead turned up with a mental defenses considerably more advanced than both Harry's (who was horrible at it) and Hermione's (who had 30 years to calmly work the finer details of her mindscape). It was that frustration that had Harry finally applying himself enough to manage the basics.

Now, Harry's ideal mindscape had been (shocker) Hogwarts castle, but he discovered the hiding something on the mental representation of a place every wizard on Great Britain had 7 years to memorize was not such a good idea. This discovery came to place when he was mentally assaulted by one of a newly rising Dark Lord when Harry was on his early fifties. Fortunately the man had back then been looking for the whereabouts of the Elder Wand (which Harry snapped at the end of the Battle of Hogwarts) so there was no harm done before Harry belatedly kicked the dark wizard out of his mind.

So Harry needed a new place to order his memories; problem was, dismantling the castle he had built would have been a lot harder than it was to build it. So Harry came up with the crazy idea of shrinking the castle and stuff it into a bottomless trunk. Now all that was in his mind was a endless expanse of white and a trunk: clearly nothing remotely inconspicuous. So Harry needed to fashion something to hid the trunk, and lazily settled for tossing a mental invisibility cloak over it and call it a day.

The battle with his new enemy took a lot of time out of him, if only because the dark wizard and his followers never did something as getting tattoos or manipulate the clouds to let people know about their evil deeds. No, instead this people the "Faceless Army" were as cunning and silent as Slytherin should have been... which is why the wizard world was deeply shocked to know that the main instigators had been Ravenclaws taking advantage of the historic suspicions on the house of snakes to further their anonymity.

When Harry, head Auror, eventually lead the forces to victory, he was begged by the masses to become the Minister of Magic. Harry did, if only to fix the power vacuum. The years under his rule short since he loathed politics, and he happily resigned as a minister and seriously considered taking a few sabbatical years to spend with his lovely wife and children... but then Headmaster McGonagall died when she tried to take on both the role as a director and take care of DADA curriculum. Sure, she managed to do so for a year with no harm to her health, but when she tried to do a repeat performance, the curse on that class kicked in. Harry's old head of the house died during a visit to Hagrid's hut, because the lovable groundskeeper had had the terrible idea of crossing one of his Blast-Ended Skrewts with an Acromantula.

Anyway. Harry took the position of headmaster with the intention of lasting only until his youngest was old enough to graduate... only to remain as a Headmaster for the next 100 years. Which allowed Harry to spend a lot of time with his grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren -and so on and so forth- during their time abroad.

With constant distractions through his life: being a political figure, war hero, Auror-department consultant, Chief Mugwump (a job he was granted to and he could never turn down), the comeback of a couple more dark lords and that memorable season when he was 85 and Ron managed to convince him to play for the Chudley Cannons... it wasn't until Harry turned 176 that he had a passable Occlumency shield.

But as time went on and Harry outlived all his schoolmates and children and the fact that Occlumency allowed the master of the mental arts to deal with grief a lot better, meant Harry, now aged and a billion times more patient that he had been as a boy, could truly meditate on what he wanted his mind to look like.

It was a slowly but steady effort now. One he indulged it more as a search of peace than a useful defense against any evil Legilimens.

By the end of Harry's second century of life (incidentally his last year alive), his mind was a convoluted collection of layers to peel off before anyone could get anything useful from his extensive knowledge and life experience. To get even something as menial as the knowledge of Harry's favorite tea brand, a mind walker would first need to enter Harry's mind (which was no easy feat since there were a layers of vicious spells layered as a barrier to be overcome). If the mind walker managed to get in, he or she would appear on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, right besides Hagrid's hut. The hut was a bait, hidden by a Notice-me-not that any wizard worth their salt could dispel, and anyone who entered there would have to deal with a very angry Fluffy.

If the mind walker got the clue that the real path to follow was through the forest, the canopy of trees was a complex mess that could only be safely traveled by "Following the spiders". Then, whoever followed the spiders would find Aragog's nest. The mean arachnid was a guardian of sorts, and the only way to defeat it was to take Gryffindor's sword form the Sorting Hat, that was innocently sitting on a stool on a dark corned of the cave. There was also the added condition that the person to take the sword could only have been a Gryffindor student.

If by some miracle the intruder got as far as to kill the spider, said intruder would get a key to open Arthur Weasley's old flying car, which had gone native and moved near the Whomping Willow. The car would have to be coaxed to let the key-holder near. When you opened the trunk there was a Portkey to the ethereal King Cross Station that Harry had visited when the _Horcrux_ in his head died.

The old train station was as empty as it was on that memory, and (since Harry could remember that memory with sharp clarity despite the years) he decided to hid the concealed trunk, in which Hogwarts was packed, under the bench where a the remains of Voldemort's soul had manifested.

It was a complete overkill of a mental defense, but Harry had worked on it more as a hobby than anything else... that and he had been bored out of his mind as his body deteriorated to the point he could hardly walk (which is why Harry made sure to sneak into his mental representation of Hogwarts' Quiddich pitch for a fly pretty much every day).

When Harry finally kicked the bucket, Rai the doe inherited the whole thing... even if Harry could not dive into it.

But then, as a mindwalker, with a hair that was a far cry from Malfoy-blond, Harry's new magic latched to the swirling foreign magic, finally getting Harry to become his mental self... which was, thank Merlin for small mercies, of the right species and of the gender with certain dangly something between the legs.

For a moment, Harry considered following around the blue-eyed blond around, but it had been a long time since he felt like himself, and he planned to use that time to walk, to jump, to fly a broom, to do anything and everything he could while his mind was getting probed.

He had a lot of confidence that his mind defenses would hold... and had no idea how long it would take for him to learn how to tap into his mindscape with his new doe-magic

...

"Why is he taking so long?" Ibiki asked as the minutes ticked by and the Yamanaka mind-walker remained still. Not that the regular memory extraction was a fast progress, since there were a lot of life experience to filter on top of whatever nasty measure the ninja under the Jutsu had designed to protect sensitive information; but this was a mind-probe to a 4 months old animal, one in which Inoichi was only supposed to find out whether or not the doe was a spy of Orochimaru. Even Jiraia, who had spent so little time around the Yamanaka method of information gathering caught up on the abnormality of such delay.

"I don't know," Shikaku admitted.

Three pensive ninja (plus Anko) watched with worry as Inoichi sweated and his chakra grew smaller and smaller as though it was been burned at an alarming speed. When the chakra grew of the Yamanaka was less than half his reserves, the blond opened his eyes. "Well, that was unexpected," Inoichi heaved, putting a hand on a wall to remain upright.

"Is that thing one of Orochimaru's pets or not?" Anko asked impatient, a kunai in hand was a clear sign that she would be more than happy to stab the doe right then and there if that was the case.

"I would't know. That doe has the most complex mind I have ever seen."

"Please elaborate," Jiraia asked, his usual goofy persona had turned into the serious veteran. It eyed the innocent doe that had looked so innocent tied up, it looked around with fright and confusion, but it wasn't trying to let itself loose by trashing like other animal did when trapped. Jiraia, along with Shikaku and everyone else in the room (minus Anko) had for sure known that the animal was pretending. They pretended not to notice and kept as if nothing was going on.

Inoichi, calmly continued with his explanation, "Well, usually when diving into someone's mind the memories would be floating and I only need to focus on the information I want to know about. If the shinobi's mind is protected by seals or mental defenses, then the memories don't come when called and there is a need to study the impressions of said memories and look for weakness. There are other methods of protecting Intel; like mixing lies with truths or to implant fake memories to lure enemy shinobi into an ambush...", now how to explain what he had seen inside the doe's head...

"This doe's mind is different. I felt some barriers -which would have been hard to pass by for anyone without experience-, but when I got past... there was a forest. I have never seen a mind with that looks like a tangible physical representation of a place."

The listening ninja (Anko included) looked at Inoichi with thoughtful expressions. They all had known the mind walker for a long time, it was quite unusual to see him both frustrated and exited about something.

"Did you learn something?" Ibiki asked.

Inoichi shook his head "I got lost. The forest was a maze of sorts, so I think it's based on a genjutsu, but I could't dispel it."

Teories were exchanged between the Nara, the Yamanaka, the Toad Sanin and the chief interrogator... that is, until Anko got fed of all the technical crap. "I have an idea!" She walked towards the tied doe, took a sharp kunai and pressed the pointy edge to the doe. "Look, bitch. If you are so smart then I bet you understand us; so tell me one good reason why I should't slit your throat?"

"Anko, I think you are been a bit drastic," Shikaku tired. Gods, his wife was going to kill him if he didn't do something to protect her Rai-chan.

Jiraia made a discrete hand-sign, and nobody stepped to prevent the crazy kunoichi from attacking the poor little animal with the very hurt nose.

"No, I think this is exactly what we need!" She rose the kunai, but before she could bring it down to stab, the doe sprung into action: one moment it was tied up looking at them with fearful confusion, the next the ropes vanished like smoke. Then it appeared with its back to a wall... which of course lead to all shinobi on the room to get on guard.

"Well, that was unexpected," Jiraia declared, and, while he thought there was no chance in hell of Orochimaru ever using the doe in front of him, there was still something fishy going on. And he would figure out what that was, he was The Great Spymaster of Konoha after all.

_ To Be Continued_

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**AN:** So... erm, plot moved a bit? Not much, but meh.

Also, I finally posted the fic that won the poll on my profile (the one with Game of Thrones x Harry Potter, called "The Rise of the Pale Dragon"; you can search for it on my profile). Please give me your opinions on this chapter, and if you can toss me an idea or two it would help me a lot to figure out what to do next. I still have no idea where this fic is going I'm afraid.


	11. Doeskin 11

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for fee.

**AN:** I hope you like this chapter, on the last two there was too little development but I at least managed to move things forwards a bit. This chapter might be a little bit messier than usual (as far as typos and grammar errors go) but I wanted to publish it already. Also, this fic will take me a long while to be updated for reasons explained at the end of the chapter.

Now on with the chapter.

_Unbetaed. Published on 24/7/2016_

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Chapter 11: Doeminded 

The doe getting free didn't develop into a battle royal or anything flashy. In fact, it ended on an underwhelming tone as the doe stumbled and almost passed out due to chakra exhaustion nearly as soon as it got free of restrains and teleported to a relatively better position in front of the wall... not that anyone in the room doubted that the ninja would win the match (had it ever started), but they expected at least to see the little doe displaying some offensive ability. So far, it had only sunshined around and gotten free of restrains. Not a big repertory, that is for sure.

Annoyed, Anko started to protest and bitch, but Shikaku was tuning her out as an idea came to life in his head. "Troublesome," he declared, before advancing towards the doe, that glared from where it stood with legs that trembled with exhaustion. "My wife's doe is smart. I believe we should try to communicate with it before trying anything else".

"Rai, you understood what we have been saying all along." It wasn't a question, the doe looked at her owners husband and nodded.

"Are you capable of speech?" the doe shook its head. A no then. Not a surprise there either, nin-animals didn't develop the ability to speak like a human until it reached puberty at the very least. On the other hand, said nin-animals could understand their human partners very fast. The discrepancy between learning to speak and understand was because the vocal chords of those animals were not meant for real speech, so they needed to develop the ability. How did they do that from a biological angle was hard to say, and such a question was probably answered somewhere in the Inuzuka library... but, right here and now it was irrelevant.

They would need to keep it simple.

"We are going to make yes or no questions then. Nod for a YES, shake your head for a NO: First of all confirm, are you a doe born in the Nara complex." Nod. "Have you ever gone out of the compound without the company of Nara Yoshino?" Head shake. "Do you know of a man named Orochimaru?" Nod.

Ibiki took over then, "Have you ever met him personally?" Head shake.

"How about..." questions came, a lot of which were apparently inane or repetitive, some of them anything but those. In the end, though, the group broke apart, leaving Shikaku standing next to the doe in a room. The lazy Nara was carrying a stack of papers Ibiki had vindictively delivered as he ordered outloud to the Konoha Strategist and temporary backstage Hokage to keep an eye on the doe (which Shikaku had no doubt it had been ordered out of spite and not because he thought the doe was a threat).

Inoichi, more intrigued about the animal mental defenses than anything else, asked his friend to keep tabs on the development of the herbivore. There was also the unsaid fact that Inoichi would have another reason to visit the Nara Compound, but, thankfully, the blond was a very nice friend and a lot less troublesome than your average ninja.

Then there was Anko, self-appointed as ANBU watch for the doe. Annoying, but not overly so: the woman when wearing the white mask was as silent and easy to miss as a sleeping snake on high grass.

All those reactions were rather predictable... very much so, in fact. But, sadly, the Toad Sanin decided to throw Shikaku a curve ball by declaring that he would be staying over at his place to keep an eye on the development of the situation. It was irritating for Shikaku, and he dreaded to think of the reaction his wife would have when he came home with Konoha's Super Pervert and his traveling companions (who he had let him know in advance he was bringing along).

Shikaku would probably get the nagging of a lifetime if Senju Tsunade-hime took down the walls of their house; worst still, his wife would probably make him fix the whole thing instead of simply calling some gennin to do the tedious menial tasks.

So troublesome.

"Let's go home," Shikaku spoke to the doe. The two of them disappeared in a vortex of spinning leaves.

...

Being in the Nara Forest was something Harry-doe had never appreciated before this very moment. The sway of the leaves and the abundance of green and browns did something to sooth the nerves that had gone highwire. Yoshino, God bless the woman, took the whole incident with a pinch of salt, not changing in the slightest in her attitude towards her "Rai-chan" as she delivered a bowl of vegetable soup... then threatened her husband with bodily harm and harsh work if the ninja that were going to come later did anything to their precious house.

To be honest, Harry felt vaguely guilty about Shikaku's situation. It had been largely Harry's fault that they were going to have "guests" at all, and he understood by the conversations that this people were not the kind of people Yoshino was happy to have around.

But beyond the guilt, Harry was just , after eating a bit of food courtesy of his favorite Kunoichi, Harry-doe went to his pillow on the floor on the living-room and went to sleep the exhaustion of what felt like the longest day he had lived in this life.

...

Yoshino watched her favorite doe, currently asleep, as she started setting the dishes on the low table. The food was not fancy and the amounts were very little per head given that she had shopped only to feed a family of three, but it would have to do. She tucked a bang behind her head, she was tired and her wrist was feeling a bit sore. It had been a long day, one that was clearly far form over: she was, yet again, left in charge of everything that needed to be done around her home. She felt upset. Don't get her wrong, she loved her family and she wouldn't change them for the world, but sometimes... on days like today she wanted to be the one to lay around and do nothing for the day. Getting the men of her life do anything was more work than doing it herself.

There was no wonder why she had become so attached to the little doe sleeping in the room.

Yoshino sighed, carefully picking up to put in the shed by the forest everything and anything of value, emotionally and otherwise, so it wouldn't get wrecked by Senju Tsunade-hime: she was very famous for breaking walls and furniture when mad, and, after the Sannin got dragged back to the village, Yoshino couldn't imagine her being in a good mood to begin with... The house looked quite bare now. Hopefully nobody would comment on it.

It started to smell like the food was soon to be ready, so she had to make her way back to the kitchen, but she didn't do so before taking one last look to Rai-chan; the poor thing looked very exhausted even in its sleep, curling into itself like a ball of brown fur. It was hard to believe that such a cute little doe could cause so much ruckus, and she felt annoyed on the paranoia of ninja. Hypocritically, though, she would keep an eye on the doe to make sure it didn't do anything that might harm Konoha. Yoshino didn't really thought it would but... well, she was a paranoid ninja too, no matter how much she might like Rai-chan, and she wouldn't hesitate if it became a liability to the village she lived in and served.

Unaware of Yoshino's thoughts, a reborn wizard slept dreamlessly.

...

After Jiraia got out from T&amp;I and found his old teammate, her apprentice, the pig and the noisy brat in orange, he had taken the whole party to the grave of the Third Hokage, so they could pay their respects to the man that had given the Village Hidden in the Leafs the best years of his life, along with his twilight ones. There was no snipping fight from either of the blonds, not even when Tsunade complained with to his teacher's grave that she had to return. The tone in her voice, while steady, carried such sadness that even rocks would understand that she loved the old man as much as any shinobi could love a teacher. She had not cried, though, and there seemed to be a spark of fire in her eye when she finished her grieving insults.

Tsunade would cave and become the Hokage, Jiraia knew so for sure just then... he just needed to push her a little more so she could pretend to cave in.

"It's getting late. We should search for a place to sleep," Shizune spoke softly, but it was easily heard in the quiet.

Jiraia shook his head moved forwards. "I got just the place, let's just get the kid home, it's past his bedtime."

"Oi!" Naruto protested, loudly, telling the three adults that he needn't any escort because he was a great ninja "Believe it!". Then went away jumping from rooftop to rooftop without even asking where to find them the next day. Impatient brat.

With a shake of his head and a mental note to scold Naruto for that later, the Toad Sannin led the two lovely females and their pig to the Nara complex. They had a lot to talk about before Tsunade took the hat.

_To Be Continued._

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**AN:** I had planed to make this a lot longer and bring it to you a lot sooner, but life conspired against it. It was, let me tell you, one of the worst months of my life (so many bad things happened). I had most of what you see here written for over two weeks, but I figured I would share it now since I won't be updating this for a while because I'm mourning the death of my grandfather who died this Tuesday. Don't get me wrong, I will still be around and working on other fics but this one... I don't think my muse will be of any use for comedy right now.

See you on the next one.

Chicaalterego.


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